if you say so either you want Logick which is a certain sign of an ill disputer or are not pleased to use it which is a worse For speech is a certain sign of a living man yet want of speech is no sure argument that he is dead for he may be dumb and yet living still and we may have other evident tokens that he is so as Eating Drinking Breathing Moving So though the constant and Universal delivery of any Doctrine by the Apostolick Churches ever since the Apostles be a very great argument of the truth of it yet there is no certainty but that truth even Divine truth may through mens wickedness be contracted from its universality and interrupted in its perpetuity and so lose this argument and yet not want others to justifie and support it self For it may be one of those principles which God hath written in all mens Hearts or a conclusion evidently arising from them It may be either contained in Scripture in express terms or deducible from it by apparent consequence If therefore you intend to prove want of a perpetual Succession of Professors a certain note of Heresie you must not content your self to shew that having it is one sign of truth but you must shew it to be the only sign of it and inseparable from it But this if you be well advised you will never undertake First because it is an impossible attempt and then because if you do it you will marr all for by proving this an inseparable sign of Catholick Doctrine you will prove your own which apparently wants it in many points not to be Catholick For whereas you say this Succession requires two things agreement with the Apostles Doctrine and an uninterrupted conveyance of it down to them that challenge it It will be proved against you that you fail in both points and that some things wherein you agree with the Apostles have not been held alwaies as your condemning the Doctrine of the Chiliasts and holding the Eucharist not necessary for Infants and that in many other things you agree not with them nor with the Church for many Ages after For example In mutilation of the Communion in having your Service in such a Language as the Assistants generally understand not your offering to Saints your Picturing of God your worshiping of Pictures 42. Ad § 24. Obj. The true Church must have Universality of place which Protestants wanting cannot avoid the just note of Heresie Answ You have not set down clearly and univocally what you mean by it whether Universality of fact or of right and if of fact whether absolute or comparative and if comparative whether of the Church in comparison of any other Religion or only of Heretical Christians or if in comparison of these whether in comparison of all other Sects conjoyned or in comparison only of any one of them Nor have you proved it by any good argument in any sense to be a certain mark of Heresie For those places of S. Austin do not deserve the name And truly in my judgment you have done advisedly in proving it no better For as for Universality of right or a right to Universality all Religions claim it but only the true has it and which has it cannot be determined unless it first be determined which is the true An absolute Universality and diffusion through all the World if you should pretend to all the World would laugh at you If you should contend for latitude with any one Religion Mahumetism would carry the Victory from you If you should oppose your selves against all other Christians besides you it is certain you would be cast in this suit also If lastly being hard driven you should please your selves with being more than any one Sect of Christians it would presently be replied that it is uncertain whether now you are so but most certain that the time has been when you have not been so Then when the a Hierom. Cont. Luciferianos whole World wondered that it was become Arrian then when Athanasius opposed the World and the World Athanasius then when b In Theodoret. Hist 16. c. l. 2. your Liberius having the contemptible paucity of his adherents objected to him as a note of Error answered for himself There was a time when there were but three opposed the decree of the King and yet those three were in the right and the rest in the wrong then when the Professors of Error surpassed the number of the Professors of truth in proportion as the sands of the Sea do the Stars of the Heaven As c In ep 48. ad Vincentium S. Austin acknowledgeth then when d Commenitorii lib. 1. c. 4. Vincentius confesseth that the Poyson of the Arrians had contaminated not now some certain portion but almost the whole World then when the Author of Nazianzens Life testifies That d In vita Nazianz the Heresie of Arrius had possessed in a manner the whole extent of the World and when Nazianzen found cause to cry out f In Orat. Arian pro seipso Where are they who reproach us with our poverty who define the Church by the multitude and despise the little flock They have the People but we the Faith And lastly when Athanasius was so overborn with Sholes and Floods of Arrians that he was enforced to write a Treatise on purpose g Tom. 2. against those who judge of the truth only by plurality of adherents So that if you had proved want of Univesality even thus restrained to be an infallible note of Heresie there would have been no remedy but you must have confessed that the time was when you were Hereticks And besides I see not how you would have avoided this great inconvenience of laying grounds and storeing up arguments for Antichrist against he comes by which he may prove his Company the true Church For it is evident out of Scripture and confessed by you that though his time be not long his dominion shall be very large and that the true Church shall be then the woman driven into the wilderness 45. Ad § 25.26 You endeavor to prove that the Faith of Protestants is no Faith being destitute of its due qualifications Obj. First you say their belief wanteth certainty because they denying the Universal Infallibility of the Church can have no certain ground to know what Objects are revealed or testified by God Ans But if there be no other ground of certainty but your Churches infallibility upon what certain ground do you know that your Church is infallible Upon what certain ground do you know all those things which must be known before you can know that your Church is infallible As that there is a God that God hath promised his assistance to your Church in all her Decrees that the Scripture wherein this promise is extant is the word of God that those Texts of Scripture which you alledge for your infallibility are incorrupted that that which you
barely to go to heaven and to be a door-keeper in the house of God especially if he will be content to tast of Purgatory in the way he may obtain it at any easier purchase Therefore the Religion of your Church is not so holy nor so good as the doctrin of Christ delivered in Scripture and therefore not so likely to come from the Fountain of holiness and goodness 72. Lastly if I follow your Church for my Guide I shall do all one as if I should follow a Company of blind men in a judgment of colours or in the choice of a way For every unconsidering man is blind in that which he does not consider Now what is your Church but a Company of unconsidering men who comfort themselves because they are a great company together but all of them either out of idleness refuse the trouble of a severe tryal of their Religion as if heaven were not worth it or out of superstition fear the event of such a tryal that they may be scrupled and staggered and disquieted by it and therefore for the most part do it not all Or if they do it they do it negligently and hypocritically and perfunctorily rather for the satisfaction of others than themselves but certainly without indifference without liberty of judgment without a resolution to doubt of it if upon examination the grounds of it prove uncertain or to leave it if they prove apparently false My own experience assures me that in this imputation I do you no injury but it is very apparent to all men from your ranking doubting of any part of your Doctrin among mortal sins For from hence it follows that seeing every man must resolve that he will never commit mortal sin that he must never examine the grounds of it at all for fear he should be moved to doubt or if he do he must resolve that no motives be they never so strong shall move him to doubt but that with his will and resolution he will uphold himself in a firm belief of your Religion though his reason and his understanding fail him And seeing this is the condition of all those whom you esteem good Catholicks who can deny but you are a Company of men unwilling and afraid to understand lest you should do good That have eyes to see and will not see that have not the love of truth which is only to be known by an indifferent tryal and therefore deserve to be given over to strong delusions men that love darkness more than light in a word that you are the blind leading the blind and what prudence there can be in following such Guides our Saviour hath taught us in saying If the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch 74. Ad § 32. Your next and last argument against the faith of Protestants is because wanting certainty and prudence it must also want the fourth condition Supernaturality For that being a humane perswasion it is not in the essence of it Supernatural and being imprudent and rash it cannot proceed from Divine motion and so is not supernatural in respect of the cause from which it proceedeth Ans This little discourse stands wholly upon what went before and therefore must fall together with it I have proved the Faith of Protestants as certain and as prudent as the faith of Papists and therefore if these be certain grounds of supernaturality our faith may have it as well as yours I would here furthermore be informed how you can assure us that your faith is not your perswasion or opinion for you make them all one that your Churches doctrine is true Or if you grant it your perswasion why is it not the perswasion of men and in respect of the subject of it an humane perswasion I desire also to know what sense there is in pretending that your perswasion is not in regard of the object only and cause of it but in nature or essence of it supernatural Lastly whereas you say that being imprudent it cannot come from divine motion certainly by this reason all they that believe your own Religion and cannot give a wise and sufficient reason for it as millions amongst you cannot must be condemned to have no supernatural faith or if not then without question nothing can hinder but that the imprudent faith of Protestants may proceed from divine motion as well as the imprudent faith of Papists 75. And thus having weighed your whole discourse and found it altogether lighter than vanity why should I not invert your conclusion and say Seeing you have not proved that whosoever errs against any one point of Faith loseth all divine Faith nor that any error whatsoever concerning that which by the Parties litigant may be esteemed a matter of faith is a grievous sin it follows not at all that when two men hold different doctrines concerning Religion that but one can be saved Not that I deny but that the sentence of S. Chrysost with which you conclude this Chapter may in a good sense be true for oftimes by the faith is meant only that Doctrin which is necessary to salvation and to say that salvation may be had without any the least thing which is necessary to salvation implies a repugnance and destroys it self Besides not to believe all necessary points and to believe none at all is for the purpose of salvation all one and therefore he that does so may justly be said to destroy the Gospel of Christ seeing he makes it uneffectual to the end for which it was intended the Salvation of mens souls But why you should conceive that all differences about Religion are concerning matters of faith in this high notion of the word for that I conceive no reason CHAP. VII The ANSWER to the Seventh CHAPTER Shewing that Protestants are not bound by the Charity which they owe to themselves to reunite themselves to the Roman Church 6. Ad § 2. WHereas you say it is directly against Charity to our selves to adventure the omitting of any means necessary to salvation this is true But so is this also that it is directly against the same Charity to adventure the omitting any thing that may any way help or conduce to my salvation that may make the way to it more secure or less dangerous And therefore if the errors of the Roman Church do but hinder me in this way or any way endanger it I am in Charity to my self bound to forsake them though they be not destructive of it Again whereas you conclude That if by living out of the Roman Church we put our selves in hazard to want something necessary to Salvation we commit a grievous sin against the vertue of Charity as it respects our selves This consequence may be good in those which are thus perswaded of the Roman Church and yet live out of it But the supposition is certainly false We may live and die out of the Roman Church without putting our selves in any such hazard Nay to
But until then as he said in the Comedy Quid verba audiam cum facta videam so may I say to you Quid verba audiam cum facta non videam To what purpose should you give us Charitable Words which presently you retract again by denying us your Charitable Actions And as these things you must do if you will stand to and make good this pretended Charity so must I tell you again and again that one thing you must not doe I mean you must not affright poor People out of their Religion with telling them that by the Confession of both sides your way is safe but in your judgment ours undoubtedly damnable Seeing neither you deny Salvation to Protestants Dying with repentance nor we promise it to you if ye Die without it For to deal plainly with you I know no Protestant that hath any other hope of your Salvation but upon these grounds that unaffected ignorance may excuse you or true repentance obtain pardon for you neither do the heavy censures which Protestants you say pass upon your Errors any way hinder but they may hope as well of you upon repentance as I do For the fierce Doctrine which God knows who teaches that Christ for many Ages before Luther had no visible Church upon Earth will be mild enough if you conceive them to mean as perhaps they do by no visible Church none pure and free from corruptions which in your judgment is all one with no Church But the truth is the corruption of the Church and the destruction of it is not all one For if a particular man or Church may as you confess they may hold some particular Errors and yet be a member of the Church Universal why may not the Church hold some Universal Error and yet be still the Church especially seeing you say it is nothing but opposing the Doctrine of the Church that makes an Error damnable and it is impossible that the Church should oppose the Church I mean that the present Church should oppose it self And then for the English Protestants though they censure your Errors deeply yet by your favour with their deepest censures it may well consist that invincible ignorance may excuse you from damnation for them For you your self confess that ignorance may excuse Errors even in Fundamental Articles of Faith so that a man so erring shall not offend at all in such his ignorance or Error they are your own words p. 19. And again with their heaviest censures it may well consist that your Errors though in themselves damanble yet may prove not damning to you if you Die with true repentance for all your sins known and unknown 5. Thus much Charity therefore if you stand to what you have said is interchangeably granted by each Side to the other that Neither Religion is so fatally destructive but that by ignorance or repentance Salvation may be had on both Sides though with a difference that keeps Papists still on the more uncharitable Side For whereas we conceive a lower degree of repentance that which they call Attrition if it be true and effectual and convert the Heart of the Penitent will serve in them They pretend even this Author which is most charitable towards us that without Contrition there is no hope for us But though Protestants may not obtain this purchase at so easie a rate as Papists yet even Papists being Judges they may obtain it and though there is no entrance for them but at the only door of Contrition yet they may enter Heaven is not inaccessible to them Their Errors are no such impenetrable Istmus's between them and Salvation but that Contrition may make a way through them All their Schism and Heresie is no such fatal Poyson but that if a man joyn with it the Antidote of a general repentance he may Die in it and live for ever Thus much then being acknowledged I appeal to any indifferent reader whether C. M. be not by his Hyperaspist forsaken in the plain Field and the point in question granted to D. Potter viz. That Protestancy even without a particular repentance is not destructive of Salvation so that all the Controversie remaining now is not simply whether Protestancy unrepented destroys Salvation as it was at first proposed but Whether Protestancy in it self that is abstracting from ignorance and contrition destroys Salvation So that as a foolish Fellow who gave a Knight the Lie desiring withal leave of him to set his Knighthood aside was answered by him that he would not suffer any thing to be set aside that belonged unto him So might we justly take it amiss that conceiving as you do Ignorance and Repentance such necessary things for us you are not more willing to consider us with them than without them For my part such is my Charity to you that considering what great necessity You have as much as any Christian Society in the World that these Sanctuaries of Ignorance and Repentance should always stand open I can very hardly persuade my self so much as in my most secret consideration to devest you of these so needful qualifications But whensoever your Errors superstitions and impieties come into my mind and besides the general bonds of humanity and Christianity my own particular Obligations to many of you such and so great that you cannot perish without a part of my self my only comfort is amidst these Agonies that the Doctrine and Practice too of Repentance is yet remaining in your Church And that though you put on a Face of confidence of your Innocence in point of Doctrine yet you will be glad to stand in the Eye of Mercy as well as your fellows and not be so stout as to refuse either Gods pardon or the Kings 6. But for the present Protestancy is called to the Barr and though not sentenced by you to Death without Mercy yet arraigned of so much natural malignity if not corrected by Ignorance or Contrition as to be in it self destructive of Salvation Which controversie I am content to dispute with you only remembring you that the adding of this limitation in it self hath made this a new Question and that this is not the conclusion for which you were charged with want of Charity 7. Ad 7. and 8. § C. M. Now this is our gradatio nof reasons Almighty God having ordained mankind to a supernatural end of Eternal Felicity hath in his providence setled competent Means c. I HIL In your gradation I shall rise so far with you as to grant that Christ founded a visible Church stored with all helps necessary to Salvation particularly with sufficient means to beget and conserve Faith to maintain Unity and compose Schisms to discover and condemn Heresies and to determine all controversies in Religion which were necessary to be determined For all these purposes he gave at the beginning as we may see in the Ep. to the Ephesians Apostles Prophets Evangelists Pastors and Doctors who by word of mouth taught their
requiring men upon only probable and Prudential motives to yield a most certain assent unto things in humane reason impossible and telling them as you do too often that they were as good not believe at all as believe with any lower degree of Faith be not a likely way to make considering men scorn your Religion and consequently all if they know no other as requiring things contradictory and impossible to be performed Lastly Whether your pretence that there is no good ground to believe Scripture but your Churches infallibility joyn'd with your pretending no ground for this but some Texts of Scripture be not a fair way to make them that understand themselves believe neither Church nor Scripture 9. Your Calumnies against Protestants in general are set down in these words Chap. 2. § 2. The very doctrine of Protestants if it be followed closely and with coherence to it self must of necessity induce Socinianism This I say confidently and evidently prove by instancing in one Error which may well be termed the Capital and Mother-heresie from which all other must follow at ease I mean their Heresie in affirming that the perpetual visible Church of Christ descended by a never interrupted Succession from our Saviour to this day is not infallible in all that it proposeth to be believed as revealed truths For if the Infallibility of such a publick Authority be once impeached what remains but that every man is given over to his own wit and discourse and talk not here of holy Scripture for if the true Church may err in defining what Scriptures be Canonical or in delivering the sense and meaning thereof we are still devolved either upon the private Spirit a foolery now exploded out of England which finally leaving every man to his own conceits ends in Socinianism or else epon natural wit and judgment for examining and determining what Scriptures contain true or false Doctrine and in that respect ought to be received or rejected And indeed take away the authority of Gods Church no man can be assured that any one Book or parcel of Scripture was written by Divine Inspiration or that all the Contents are infallibly true which are the direct Errors of Socinians If it were but for this reason alone no man who regards the eternal salvation of his Soul would live or die in Protestancy from which so vast absurdities as these of the Socinians must inevitably follow And it ought to be an unspeakable comfort to all us Catholicks while we consider that none can deny the infallible authority of our Church but jointly he must be left to his own wit and ways and must abandon all infused Faith and true Religion if he do but understand himself aright In all which Discourse the only true word you speak is This I say confidently As for proving evidently that I believe you reserved for some other opportunity for the present I am sure you have been very sparing of it 10. You say indeed confidently enough that the denyal of the Churches infallibility is the Mother-heresie from which all other must follow at ease which is so far from being a necessary truth as you make it that it is indeed a manifest falshood Neither is it possible for the wit of man by any good or so much as probable consequence from the denialaof the Churches Infallibility to deduce any one of the ancient Heresies or any one Error of the Socinians which are the Heresies here entreated of For who would not laugh at him that should argue thus Neither the Church of Rome nor any other Church is infallible Ergo The Doctrine of Arrius Pelagius Eutyches Nestorius Photinus Manichaeus was true Doctrine On the other side it may be truly said and justified by very good and effectual reason that he that affirms with you the Popes Infallibility puts himself into his hands and power to be led by him at his ease and pleasure into all Heresie and even to Hell it self and cannot with reason say so long as he is constant to his grounds Domine cur it a facis Sir Why do you thus but must believe white to be black and black to be white vertue to be vice and vice to be vertue nay which is a horrible but a most certain truth Christ to be Antichrist and Antichrist to be Christ if it be possible for the Pope to say so Which I say and will maintain howsoever you daub and disguise it is indeed to make men apostate from Christ to his pretended Vicar but real Enemy For that name and no better if we may speak truth without offence I presume he deserves who under pretence of interpreting the Law of Christ which Authority without any word of express warrant he hath taken upon himself doth in many parts evacuate and dissolve it So dethroning Christ from his dominion over mens consciences and instead of Christ setting up himself In as much as he that requires that his Interpretations of any Law should be obeyed as true and genuine seem they to mens understandings never so dissonant and discordant from it as the Bishop of Rome does requires indeed that his Interpretations should be the Laws and he that is firmly prepared in mind to believe and receive all such Interpretations without judging of them and though to his private judgment they seem unreasonable is indeed congruously disposed to hold Adultery a venial sin and Fornication no sin whensoever the Pope and his adherents shall so declare And whatsoever he may plead yet either wittingly or ignorantly he makes the Law and the Law-maker both stales and obeys only the Interpreter As if I should submit to the Laws of the King of England but should indeed resolve to obey them in that sence which the King of France should put upon them whatsoever it were I presume every understanding man would say that I did indeed obey the King of France and not the King of England If I should pretend to believe the Bible but that I would understand it accordingly to the sense which the chief Mufty should put upon it who would not say that I were a Christian in pretence only but indeed a Mahumetan 11. Nor will it be to purpose for you to pretend that the precepts of Christ are so plain that it cannot be feared that any Pope should ever go about to dissolve them and pretend to be a Christian For not to say that you now pretend the contrary to wit that the Law of Christ is obscure even in things necessary to be believed and done and by saying so have made a fair way for any foul interpretation of any part of it certainly that which the Church of Rome hath already done in this kind is an evident argument that if she once had this Power unquestioned and made expedite and ready for use by being contracted to the Pope she may do what she pleaseth with it Who that had lived in the Primative Church would not have thought it as utterly improbable
of God also this outward State and Glory being well disposed doth as I have said ingender quicken increase and nourish the inward reverence respect and Devotion which is due to so Sovereign Majesty and Power Which those whom the use thereof cannot persuade unto would easily by the want of it be brought to confess for which cause I crave leave to be excused by them herein if in Zeal to the common Lord of all I choose rather to commend the vertue of an Enemy than to flatter the vice and imbecility of a Friend And so much for this matter 24. Again what if the Names of the Priests and Altars so frequent in the Ancient Fathers though not in the now Popish sense be now resumed and more commonly used in England than of late times they were that so the colourable argument of their conformity which is but nominal with the Ancient Church and our inconformity which the Governors of the Church would not have so much as nominal may be taken away from them and the Church of England may be put in a State in this regard more justifiable against the Roman than formerly it was being hereby enabled to say to Papists whensoever these Names are objected we also use the Names of Priests and Altars and yet believe neither the Corporal Presence nor any Proper and propitiatory Sacrifice 25. What if Protestants be now put in mind that for exposition of Scripture they are bound by a Canon to follow the Ancient Fathers which whosoever doth with sincerity it is utterly impossible he should be a Papist And it is most falsly said by you that you know that to some Protestants I clcarly demonstrated or ever so much as undertook or wentabout to demonstrate the contrary What if the Centurists be censured somewhat roundly by a Protestant Divine for affirming that the keeping of the Lords day was a thing indifferent for two Hundren Years Is there in all this or any part of it any kind of proof of this scandalous Calumny 26. As for the points of Doctrine wherein you pretend that these Divines begin of late to falter and to comply with the Church of Rome upon a due examination of particulars it will presently appear First that part of them always have been and now are held constantly one way by them as the Authority of the Church in determining Controversies of Faith though not the Infallibility of it That there is Inherent Justice though so imperfect that it cannot justifie That there are Traditions though none necessary That Charity is to be preferred before knowledg That good Works are not properly meritorious And lastly that Faith alone justifies though that Faith justifies not which is alone And Secondly for the remainder that they every one of them have been Anciently without breach of Charity disputed among Protestants such for example were the Questions about the Popes being the Antichrist the Lawfulness of some kind of Prayers for the Dead the Estate of the Fathers Souls before Christs Ascension Freewil Predestination Universal Grace the Possibility of keeping Gods Commandments The use of Pictures in the Church Wherein that there hath been anciently diversity of opinion anongst Protestants it is justified to my hand by a witness with you beyond exception even your great Friend M. Brerely whose care exactness and fidelity you say in your Preface is so extraordinary great Consult him therefore Tract 3. Sect. 7. of his Apology And in the 9 10 11. 14. 24. 26. 27. 37. Subdivisions of that Section you shall see as in a mirror your self proved an egregious calumniator for charging Protestants with innovation and inclining to Popery under pretence forsooth that their Doctrine begins of late to be altered in these points Whereas M Brerely will inform you they have been anciently and even from the begininng of the Reformation controverted amongst them though perhaps the Stream and Current of their Doctors run one way and only some Brook or Rivulet of them the other 27. It remains now in the last place that I bring my self fairly off from your foul Aspersions that so my Person may not be any disparagement to the Cause nor any scandal to weak Christians 28. First upon Hearsay you charge me with a great number of false and impious Doctrines which I will not name in particular because I will not assist you so far in the spreading of my own undeserved defamation but whosoever teaches or holds them let him be Anathema The Summ of them all is this Nothing ought or can be certainly believed farther than it may be proved by evidence of Natural Reason where I conceive Natural reason it opposed to supernatural Revelation and whosoever holds so let him be Anathema And moreover to clear my self once for all from all imputations of this nature which charge me injuriously with denial of Supernatural Verities I profess sincerely that I believe all those Books of Scripture which the Church of England accounts Canonical to be the Infallible Word of God I believe all things evidently contained in them all things evidently or even probably deducible from them I acknowledge all that to be Heresie which by the Act of Parliament primo of Q. ELIZ. is declared to be so and only to be so And though in such points which may be held diversly of divers men salvâ Fidei compage I would not take any Mans Liberty from him and humbly beseech all men that they would not take mine from me Yet thus much I can say which I hope will satisfie any man of reason that whatsoever hath been held necessary to Salvation either by the Catholick Church of all ages or by the consent of Fathers measured by Vincentius Lyrinensis his rule or is held necessary either by the Catholick Church of this age or by the consent of Protestants or even by the Church of England that against the Socinians and all others whatsoever I do verily believe and embrace 29. But what are all Personal matters to the business in hand If it could be proved that Cardinal Bellarmine was indeed a Jew or that Cardinal Perron was an Atheist yet I presume you would not accept of this for an Answer to all their writings in defence of your Religion Let then my actions and intentions and opinions be what they will yet I hope truth is nevertheless Truth nor reason ever the less Reason because I speak it And therefore the Christian Reader knowing that his Salvation or Damnation depends upon his impartial and sincere judgment of these things will guard himself I hope from these Impostures and regard not the Person but the cause and the reasons of it not who speaks but what is spoken Which is all the favour I desire of him as knowing that I am desirous not to persuade him unless it be truth whereunto I persuade him 30. The last Accusation is That I answer out of Principles which Protestants themselves will profess to detest whch indeed were to the purpose
exception against a Physitian that himself was sometimes in and recovered himself from that Disease which he undertakes to cure or against a Guide in a way that at first before he had experience himself mistook it and afterwards found his error and amended it That noble writer Michael de Montai'gne was surely of a far different mind for he will hardly allow any Physitian competent but only for such Diseases as himself had passed through And a far greater than Montai'gne even he that said Tu conversus confirma fratres when thou art converted strengthen by Brethren gives us sufficiently to understand that they which have themselves been in such a state as to need Conversion are not thereby made incapable of but rather engaged and obliged unto and qualified for this Charitable Function 41. The Motives then hitherto not answered were these 42. I. Because perpetual visible profession which could never be wanting to the Religion of Christ nor any part of it is apparently wanting to Protestant Religion so far as concerns the points in contestation II. Because Luther and his followers separating from the Church of Rome separated also from all Churches pure or impure true or false then being in the world upon which ground I conclude that either Gods promises did fail of performance if there were then no Church in the World which held all things necessary and nothing repugnant to Salvation or else that Luther and his Sectaries separating from all Churches then in the World and so from the true if there were any true were damnable Schismaticks III. Because if any credit may be given to as credible records as any are extant the Doctrine of Catholicks hath been frequently confirmed and the opposite Doctrine of Protestants confounded with supernatural and Divine Miracles IV. Because many points of Protestant Doctrine are the damned Opinions of Hereticks condemned by the Primitive Church V. Because the Prophecies of the Old Testament touching the Couversion of Kings and Nations to the true Religion of Christ have been accomplished in and by the Catholick Roman Religion and the Professors of it and not by Protestant Religion and the Professors of it VI. Because the Doctrine of the Church of Rome is conformable and the Doctrine of Protestants contrary to the Doctrine of the Fathers of the Primitive Church even by the Confession of Protestants themselves I mean those Fathers who lived within the compass of the first 600. years to whom Protestants themselves do very frequently and very confidently appeal VII Because the first pretended Reformers had neither extraordinary Commission from God nor ordinary Mission from the Church to Preach Protestant Doctrine VIII Because Luther to Preach against the Mass which contains the most material points now in controversie was persuaded by reasons suggested to him by the Devil himself disputing with him So himself professeth in his Book de Missa Privata That all men might take heed of following him who professeth himself to follow the Devil IX Because the Protestant cause is now and hath been from the beginning maintained with grosse falsifications and Calumnies whereof their prime Controversie writers are notoriously and in high degree guilty X. Because by denying all humane Authority either of Pope or Councils or Church to determine Controversies of Faith they have abolished all possible means of suppressing Heresie or restoring Unity to the Church These are the Motives now my Answers to them follow briefly and in order 43. To the first God hath neither drecreed nor foretold that his true Doctrine should de facto be alwaies visibly professed without any mixture of falshood To the second God hath neither decreed nor foretold that there shall be alwaies a visible Company of Men free from all Error in it self Damnable Neither is it alwaies of necessity Schismatical to separate from the external Communion of a Church though wanting nothing necessary For if this Church supposed to want nothing necessary require me to profess against my Conscience that I believe some Error tho never so small and innocent which I do not believe and will not allow me Her Communion but upon this condition In this case the Church for requiring this condition is Schismatical and not I for separating from the Church To the third If any credit may be given to Records far more creditable than these the Doctrine of Protestants that is the Bible hath been confirmed and the Doctrine of Papists which is in many points plainly opposite to it confounded with Supernatural and Divine Miracles which for number and Glory out-shine Popish pretended Miracles as much as the Sun doth an Ignis fatuus those I mean which were wrought by our Saviour Christ and his Apostles Now this Book by the Confession of all sides confirmed by innumerous Miracles foretels me plainly that in after Ages great Signs and Wonders shall be wrought in confirmation of false Doctrine and that I am not to believe any Doctrine which seems to my understanding repugnant to the first though an Angel from Heaven should teach it which were certainly as great a Miracle as any that was ever wrought in attestation of any part of the Doctrine of the Church of Rome But that true Doctrine should in all Ages have the testimony of Miracles that I am no where taught So that I have more reason to suspect and be afraid of pretended Miracles as signs of false Doctrine then much to regard them as certain arguments of the truth Besides setting aside the Bible and the Tradition of it there is as good story for Miracles wrought by those who lived and died in opposition to the Doctrine of the Roman Church as by S. Cyprian Colmannus Columbanus Aidanus and others as there is for those that are pretended to be wrought by the Members of that Church Lastly it seems to me no strange thing that God in his Justice should permit some true Miracles to be wrought to delude them who have forged so many as apparently the Professors of the Roman Doctrine have to abuse the World To the Fourth All those were not a See this acknowledged by Bellar de Scrip Eccles in Philastrio by Petavius Animad in Epiph de inscrip operis By S. Austin Lib. de Haeres Haer. 80. Hereticks which by Philastrius Epiphanius or S. Austine were put in the Catalogue of Hereticks To the Fifth Kings and Nations have been and may be Converted by Men of contrary Religions To the Sixth The Doctrine of Papists is confessed by Papists contrary to the Fathers in many points To the Seventh The Pastors of a Church cannot but have Authority from it to Preach against the abuses of it whether in Doctrine or Practice if there be any in it Neither can any Christian want an ordinary commission from God to do a necessary work of Charity after a peacable manner when there is no body else that can or will do it In extraordinary cases extraordinary courses are not to be disallowed If some
Christian Lay-man should come into a Country of Infidels and had ability to persuade them to Christianity who would say he might not use it for want of Commission To the Eighth Luthers conference with the Devil might be for ought I know nothing but a Melancholy Dream If it were real the Devil might persuade Luther from the Mass hoping by doing so to keep him constant to it Or that others would make his dissuasion from it an argument for it as we see Papists do and be afraid of following Luther as confessing himself to have been persuaded by the Devil To the Ninth Illiacos intra muros peccatur extra Papists are more guilty of this fault than Protestants Even this very Author in this very Pamphlet hath not so many leaves as falsifications and Calumnies To the Tenth Let all Men believe the Scripture and that only and endeavour to believe it in the true sense and require no more of others and they shall find this not only a better but the only means to suppress Heresie and restore Unity For he that believes the Scripture sincerely and endeavours to believe it in the true sense cannot possibly be an Heretick And if no more than this were required of any Man to make him capable of the Churches Communion then all Men so qualified though they were different in opinion yet notwithstanding any such difference must be of necessity one in Communion THE ANSWER TO THE PREFACE TO the First and Second § If beginnings be ominous as they say they are D. Potter hath cause to look for great store of uningenuous dealing from you the very first words you speak of him viz. That he hath not so much as once truly and really fallen upon the point in question being a most unjust and immodest imputation 2. For the point in question was not that which you pretend Whether both Papists and Protestants can be saved in their several Professions But whether you may without uncharitableness affirm that Protestancy unrepented destroys Salvation For there is no incongruity but that it may be true That you and we connot both be Saved and yet as Ttrue That without uncharitableness you cannot pronounce us Damned And therefore though the Author of Charity Mistaken had proved as strongly as he hath done weakly that one Heaven could not receive Protestants and Papists both yet certainly it was very hastily and unwarrantably and therefore uncharitably concluded that Protestants were the part that was to be excluded As though Jews and Christians cannot both be saved yet a Jew cannot justly and therefore not charitably pronounce a Christian Damned 3. Neither may you or C. M. conclude him from hence as covertly you do an Enemy to Souls by deceiving them with ungrounded false hopes of Salvation seeing the hope of Salvation cannot be ungrounded which requires and supposes belief and practise of all things absolutely necessary to Salvation and repentance of those Sins and Errors which we fall into by humane frailty Nor a friend to indifferency in Religions seeing he gives them only hope of pardon of Errors who are desirous and according to the proportion of their opportunities and abilities industrious to find the truth or at least truly repentant that they have not been so Which Doctrine is very fit to excite men to a constant and impartial search of truth and very far from teaching them that it is indifferent what Religion they are of and without all controversie very honourable to the goodness of God with which how it can consist not to be satisfied with his Servants true endeavours to know his will and do it without full and exact performance I leave it to you and all good men to judge 5. You say he was loth to affirm plainly that generally both Catholicks and Protestants may be saved which yet is manifest he doth affirm plainly of Protestants throughout his Book and of Erring Papists that have sincerely sought the truth and failed of it and Die with a generalrepentance p. 77.78 And yet you deceive your self if you conveive he had any other necessity to do so but only that he thought it true For we may and do pretend that before Luther there were many true Churches besides the Roman which agreed not with her in particular The Greek Church So that what you say is evidently true is indeed evidently false Besides if he had had any necessity to make use of you in this matter he needed not for this end to say that now in your Church Salvation may be had but onely that before Luthers time it might be Then when your means of knowing the truth were not so great and when your ignorance might be more invincible and therefore more excusable So that you may see if you please it is not for ends but for the love of truth that we are thus charitable to you 6. Neither is it material what you alledge that they are not Fundamental Errors and then what imports it whether we hold them or no forasmuch as concerns cur possibility to be Saved As if we were not bound by the Love of God and the love of truth to be zealous in the defence of all Truths that are any way profitable though not simply necessary to Salvation Or as if any good man could satisfie his Conscience with being so affected and resolved Our Saviour himself having assured us a That he that shall break one of his least Commandments some whereof you pretend are concerning venial sins and consequently the keeping of them not necessary to Salvation and shall so teach men shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven 7. But then it imports very much though not for the possibility that you may be saved yet for the probability that you will be so because the holding of these Errors though it did not merit migh yet occasion Damnation As the Doctrine of Indulgences may take away the fear of Purgatory and the Doctrine of Purgatory the fear of Hell as you well know it does too frequently So that though a godly man might be saved with these Errors yet by means of them many are made vicious and so damned By them I say though not for them No godly Lay-man who is verily persuaded that there is neither impiety nor superstition in the use of your Latin Service shall be Damned I hope for being present at it yet the want of that Devotion which the frequent hearing the Offices understood might happily beget in them the want of that instruction and edification which it might afford them may very probably hinder the Salvation of many which otherwise might have been saved Besides though the matter of an Error may be only something profitable not necessary yet the neglect of it may be a damnable Sin As not to regard Venial Sins is in the Doctrine of your Schools mortal Lastly as Venial Sins you say dispose men to mortal so the erring from some profitable though lesser truth may dispose a
commits them Not you will say if he Die in them without repentance and such Protestants you speak of who without Repentance Die in their Errors Yea but what if they Die in their Errors with Repentance than I hope you will have Charity enough to think they may be saved Charity Mist takes it indeed for granted In the place above quoted that this supposition is distructive of it self and that it is impossible and incongruous that a Man should repent of those Errors wherein he Dies or Die in those whereof he repents But it was wisely done of Him to take it for granted for most certainly He could not have spoken one word of sense for the confirmation of it For seeing Protestants believe as well as you Gods infinite and most admirable perfections in himself more than most worthy of all possible love seeing they believe as well as you his infinite goodness to them in Creating them of nothing in Creating them according to his own Image in Creating all things for their use and benefit in streaming down his Favours on them every moment of their Lives in designing them if they serve him to infinite and Eternal Happiness in Redeeming them not with corruptible things but the Pretious Blood of his beloved Son seeing they believe as well as you His infinite goodness and Patience towards them in expecting their Conversion in Wooing Alluring Leading and by all means which his Wisdom can Suggest unto him and Mans nature is capable of drawing them to Repentance and Salvation Seeing they believe these things as well as you and for ought you know consider them as much as you and if they do not it is not their Religion but they that are to blame what can hinder but that the consideration of Gods most infinite goodness to them and their own almost infinite wickedness against him Gods Spirit cooperating with them may raise them to a true and sincere and a cordial love of God And seeing sorrow for having injured or offended the Person beloved or when we fear we may have offended him is the most natural effect of true love what can hinder but that love which hath oftimes constrained them to lay down their lives for God which our Saviour assures us is the noblest Sacrifice we can offer may produce in them an universal sorrow for all their sins both which they know they have committed and which they fear they may have In which number their being negligent or not dispassionate or not unprejudicate enough in seeking the truth and the effect thereof their Errors if they be sins cannot but be compriz'd In a word what should hinder but that that Prayer Delicta sua quis intelligit who can understand his faults Lord cleanse thou me from my secret sins may be heard and accepted by God as well from a Protestant that Dies in some Errors as from a Papist that Dies in some other sins of Ignorance which perhaps he might more easily have discovered to be sins than a Protestant could his Errors to be Errors As well from a Protestant that held some Error which as he conceived Gods Word and his Reason which is also in some sort Gods Word led him unto as from a Dominican who perhaps took up his opinion upon trust not because he had reason to believe it true but because it was the opinion of his Order for the same man if he had light upon another Order would in all probability have been of the other Opinion For what else is the cause that generally all the Dominicans are of one Opinion and all the Jesuits of the other I say from a Dominican who took up his Opinion upon trust and that such an Opinion if we believe the writers of your Order as if it be granted true it were not a point matter what Opinions any man held or what actions any man did for the best would be as bad as the worst and the worst as good as the best And yet such is the partiality of your Hypocrisie that of disagreeing Papists neither shall deny the truth testified by God but both may hope for Salvation but of disagreeing Protestants though they differ in the same thing one side must deny Gods Testimony and be incapable of Salvation That a Dominican through culpable negligence living and dying in his Error may repent of it though he knows it not or be saved though he do not But if a Protestant do the very same thing in the very same point and Die in his Error his case is desperate The Sum of all that hath been said to this Demand is this 1. That no Erring Protestant denys any truth testified by God under this formality as testified by him nor which they know or believe to be testified by him And therefore it is a horrible Calumny in you to say They call Gods Veracity in question For Gods undoubted and unquestioned Veracity is to them the ground why they hold all they do hold neither do they hold any Opinion so stifly but they will forgoe it rather than this one That all which God says is true 2. God hath not so clearly and plainly declared himself in most of these things which are in controversie between Protestants but that an honest man whose heart is right to God and one that is a true lover of God and of his truth may by reason of the conflict of contrary Reasons on both sides very easily and therefore excusably mistake and embrace Error for Truth and reject Truth for Error 3. If any Protestant or Papist be betrayed into or kept in any Error by any sin of his will as it is to be feared many Millions are such Error is as the cause of it sinful and damnable yet not exclusive of all hope of Salvation but pardonable if discovered upon a particular explicite repentance if not discovered upon a general and implicite repentance for all Sins known and unknown in which number all sinful Errors must of necessity be contained 27. Ad 19. § To the Ninth Wherein you are so urgent for a particular Catalogue of Fundamentals I answer almost in your own words that we also constantly urge and require to have a particular Catalogue of your Fundamentals whether they be written Verities or unwritten Traditions or Church Definitions all which you say integrate the material Object of your Faith In a word of all such Points as are defined and sufficiently proposed so that whosoever denys or doubts of any of them is certainly in the state of damnation A Catalogue I say in particular of the Proposals and not only some general definition or description under which you lurk deceitfully of what and what only is sufficiently proposed wherein yet you do not very well agree This great diversity of Opinions among you touching this matter if any man doubt of it let him read Franciscus Picus Mirandula in l. Theorem in Exposit Theor quarti and Tho. Waldensis Tom. 3. De
Doctrine and ours impossible and that for them who are convicted in Conscience of her Errors not to forsake her in them or to be reconciled unto her is damnable Therefore if Roman Catholicks be convicted in Conscience of the Errors of Protestants they may and must judge a reconciliation with them damnable and consequently to judge so is no more uncharitable in them than it is in Protestants to judge as they do I HIL All this I grant nor would any Protestant accuse you of want of Charity if you went no further If you be perswaded in Conscience that our Religion is erroneous the profession of it though in it self most true to you would be damnable For it is no uncharitableness to judge Hypocrisie a damnable Sin Let Hypocrite then and Dissemblers on both Sides pass It is not towards them but good Christians not to Protestant Professors but Believers that we require your Charity What think you of those that believe so verily the truth of our Religion that they are resolved to Die in it and if occasion were to Die for it What Charity have you for them What think you of those that in the Days of our Fathers laid down their Lives for it are you content that they shall be saved or do you hope they may be so Will you grant that notwithstanding their Errors there is good hope they might Die with Repentance and if they did so certainly they are saved If you will do so this Controversie is ended No man will hereafter charge you with want of Charity This is as much as either we give you or expect of you while you remain in your Religion But then you must leave abusing silly People with telling them as your fashion is that Protestants confess Papists may be saved but Papists confess not so much of Protestants therefore yours is the safer way and in Wisdom and Charity to our own Souls we are bound to follow it For granting this you grant as much hope of Salvation to Protestants as Protestants do to you If you will not but still affirm as C. M. does that Protestants not dissemblers but believers without a particular Repentance of their Religion cannot be saved This I say is a want of Charity But I pray Sir what dependance is there between these Propositions We that hold Protestant Religion false should be damned if we should profess it Therefore they also shall be damned that hold it true Just as if you should conclude Because he that doubts is Damned if he Eat Therefore he that does not doubt is damned also if he Eat And therefore though your Religion to us or ours to you if professed against Conscience would be damnable yet may it well be uncharitable to define it shall be so to them that profess either this or that according to Conscience 3. Ad 3.4.5.6 § C. M. Our meaning is not that we give Protestants over to reprobation that we offer no Prayers in hope of their Salvation that we hold their Case desperate God forbid c. I HIL I wish with all my Heart that you had expressed your self in this matter more fully and plainly Yet that which you say doth plainly enough afford us these Corollaries 1. That whatsoever Protestant wanteth Capacity or having it wanteth sufficient means of instruction to convince his Conscience of the falshood of his own and the truth of the Roman Religion by the confession of his most rigid Adversaries may be saved notwithstanding any Error in his Religion 2. That nothing hinders but that a Protestant Dying a Protestant may Die with contrition for all his Sins 3. That if he Die with Contrition he may and shall be saved 4. All these acknowledgments we have from you while you are as you say stating but as I conceive granting the very point in question So that according to your Doctrine the heavy sentence shall remain upon such only as either were or but for their own fault might have been sufficiently convinced of the truth of your Religion and the falshood of their own and yet Die in it without contrition Which Doctrine if you would stand to and not pull down and pull back with one hand what you give and build with the other this controversie were ended and I should willingly acknowledge that which follows in your fourth paragraph That you allow Protestants as much Charity as D. Potter allows you But then I must intreat you to alter the argument of this Chapter and not to go about to give us reasons why amongst Men of different Religions one side only can be saved absolutely which your Reasons drive at But you must temper the crudeness of your Assertion by saying One Side only can be saved unless want of Conviction or else Repentance excuse the other Besides you must not only abstain from damning any Protestant in particular but from affirming in general that Protestants Dying in their Religion cannot be saved for you must always remember to add this caution unless they were excusably ignorant of the falshood of it or Died with contrition And then considering that you cannot know whether or no all things considered they were convinced sufficiently of the truth of your Religion and the falshood of their own you are obliged by Charity to judge the best and hope they are not Considering again that notwithstanding their Errors they may Die with contrition and that it is no way improbable that they do so and the contrary you cannot be certain of You are bound in Charity to judge and hope they do so Considering thirdly and lastly that if they Die not with Contrition yet it is very probable they may Die with Attrition and that this pretence of yours that Contrition will serve without actual Confession but Attrition will not is but a Nicety or Phansie or rather to give it the true name a Device of your own to serve ends and purposes God having no where declared himself but that wheresoever he will accept of that Repentance which you are pleased to call Contrition he will accept of that which you call Attrition For though he like best the bright Flaming Holocaust of Love yet he rejects not he quenches not the smoaking Flax of that Repentance if it be true and effectual which proceeds from hope and fear These things I say considered unless you will have the Charity of your Doctrine rise up in judgment against your uncharitable Practice you must not only not be peremptory in damning Protestants but you must hope well of their Salvation and out of this hope you must do for them as well as others those as you conceive Charitable offices of Praying giving Alms and offering Sacrifice which usually you do for those of whose Salvation you are well and Charitably persuaded for I believe you will never conceive so well of Protestants as to assure your selves they go directly to Heaven These things when you do I shall believe you think as Charitably as you speak
diligence to find the truth do yet miss of it and fall into Error there is no danger in it They that Err and they that do not Err may both be saved So that those places which contain things necessary and wherein Error were dangerous need no Infallible interpreter because they are plain and those that are obscure need none because they contain not things necessary neither is Error in them dangerous The Law-maker speaking in the Law I grant it is no more easily understood than the Law it self for his Speech is nothing else but the Law I grant it very necessary that besides the Law-maker speaking in the Law there should be other Judges to determine Civil and Criminal Controversies and to give every man that Justice which the Law allows him But your Argument drawn from hence to shew a necessity of a visible Judge in Controversies of Religion I say is Sophistical and that for many Reasons 14. First Because the variety of Civil cases is infinite and therefore there cannot be possibly Laws enough provided for the determination of them and therefore there must be a Judge to supply out of the Principles of Reason the interpretation of the Law where it is defective But the Scripture we say is a perfect Rule of Faith and therefore needs no supply of the defects of it 15. Secondly To execute the Letter of the Law according to rigour would be many times unjust and therefore there is need of a Judge to moderate it whereof in Religion there is no use at all 16. Thirdly In Civil and Criminal causes the parties have for the most part so much interest and very often so little honesty that they will not submit to a Law though never so plain if it be against them or will not see it to be against them though it be so never so plainly whereas if men were honest and the Law were plain and extended to all cases there would be little need of Judges Now in matters of Religion when the Question is whether every man be a fit Judge and chooser for himself we suppose men honest and such as understand the difference between a Moment and Eternity And such men we conceive will think it highly concerns them to be of the true Religion but nothing at all that this or that Religion should be the true And then we suppose that all the necessary points of Religion are plain and easie and consequently every man in this cause to be a competent Judge for himself because it concerns himself to judge right as much as Eternal happiness is worth And if through his own default he judge amiss he alone shall suffer for it 17. Fourthly in Civil Controversies we are obliged only to external passive obedience and not to an internal and active We are bound to obey the Sentence of the Judge or not to resist it but not always to believe it just But in matters of Religion such a Judge is required whom we should be obliged to believe to have judged right So that in Civil Controversies every honest understanding man is fit to be a Judge But in Religion none but he that is infallible 18. Fifthly in Civil Causes there is means and power when the Judge has decreed to compel men to obey his Sentence otherwise I believe Laws alone would be to as much purpose for the ending of differences as Laws and Judges both But all the Power in the World is neither fit to convince nor able to compel a mans Conscience to consent to any thing Worldly terror may prevail so far as to make men profess a Religion which they believe not such men I mean who know not that there is a Heaven provided for Martyrs and a Hell for those that dissemble such truths as are necessary to be professed But to force either any man to believe what he believes not or any honest man to dissemble what he does believe if God commands him to profess it or to profess what he does not believe all the Powers in the World are too weak with all the Powers of Hell to assist them 19. Sixthly in Civil Controversies the case cannot be so put but there may be a Judge to end it who is not a party In Controversies of Religion it is in a manner impossible to be avoided but the Judge must be a party For this must be the first whether he be a Judge or no and in that he must be a party Sure I am the Pope in the Controversies of our time is a chief party for it highly concerns him even as much as his Popedom is worth not to yield any one point of his Religion to be Erroneous And he is a man subject to like passions with other men And therefore we may justly decline his Sentence for fear temporal respects should either blind his judgment or make him pronounce against it 20. Seventhly in Civil Controversies it is impossible Titius should hold the land in question and Sempronius too and therefore either the Plantiff must injure the Defendant by disquieting his possession or the Defendant wrong the Plantiff by keeping his right from him But in Controversies of Religion the Case is otherwise I may hold my Opinion and do you no wrong and you yours and do me none Nay we may both of us hold our Opinion and yet do our selves no harm provided the difference be not touching any thing necessary to Salvation and that we love truth so well as to be diligent to inform our Conscience and constant in following it 21. Eightly For the ending of Civil Controversies who does not see it is absolutely necessary that not only Judges should be appointed but that it should be known and unquestioned who they are Thus all the Judges of our Land are known men known to be Judges and no man can doubt or question but these are the Men. Otherwise if it were a disputable thing who were these Judges and they had no certain warrant for their Authority but only some Topical congruities would not any man say such Judges in all likelihood would rather multiply Controversies then end them 22. Ninthly and lastly For the deciding of Civil Controversies men may appoint themselves a judge But in matters of Religion this office may be given to none but whom God hath designed for it who doth not always give us those things which we conceive most expedient for our selves 23. So likewise if our Saviour the King of Heaven had intended that all Controversies in Religion should be by some Visible Judge finally determined who can doubt but in plain terms he would have expressed himself about this matter He would have said plainly The Bishop of Rome I have appointed to decide all emergent Controversies For that our Saviour designed the Bishop of Rome to this Office and yet would not say so nor cause it to be written ad Rei memoriam by any of the Evangelists or Apostles so much as once but leave it to
be drawn out of uncertain Principles by thirteen or fourteen more uncertain consequences He that can believe it let him All these Reasons I hope will convince you that though we have and have great necessity of Judges in Civil and Criminal causes yet you may not conclude from thence that there is any publick authorized Judge to determine Controversies in Religion nor any necessity there should be any 24. But the Scripture stands in need of some watchful and unerring eye to guard it by means of whose assured vigilancy we may undoubtedly receive it sincere and pure Very true but this is no other than the watchful Eye of Divine providence the goodness whereof will never suffer that the Scriptures should be depraved and corrupted but that in them should be always extant a conspicuous and plain way to Eternal happiness Neither can any thing be more palpably unconsistent with his goodness than to suffer Scripture to be undiscernably corrupted in any matter of moment and yet to exact of men the belief of those verities which without their fault or knowledge or possibility of prevention were defaced out of them So that God requiring of men to believe Scripture in its purity ingages himself to see it preserved in sufficient purity and you need not fear but he will satisfie his ingagement You say we can have no assurance of this but your Churches Vigilancy But if we had no other we were in a hard case for who could then assure us that your Church has been so vigilant as to guard Scripture from any the least alteration There being various Lections in the ancient Copies of your Bibles what security can your new raised Office of Assurance give us that that reading is true which you now receive and that false which you reject Certainly they that anciently received and made use of these divers Copies were not all guarded by the Churches vigilancy from having their Scripture altered from the purity of the Original in many places For of different readings it is not in nature impossible that all should be false but more than one cannot possibly be true Yet the want of such a protection was no hindrance to their Salvation and why then shall the having of it be necessary for ours But then this Vigilancy of your Church what means have we to be ascertain'd of it First the thing is not evident of it self which is evident because many do not believe it Neither can any thing be pretended to give evidence to it but only some places of Scripture of whose incorruption more than any other what is it that can secure me If you say the Churches vigilancy you are in a Circle proving the Scriptures uncorrupted by the Churches vigilancy and the Churches vigilancy by the incorruption of some places of Scripture and again the incorruption of those places by the Churches vigilancy If you name any other means than that means which secures me of the Scriptures incorruption in those places will also serve to assure me of the same in other places For my part abstracting from Divine Providence which will never suffer the way to Heaven to be blocked up or made invisible I know no other means I mean no other natural and rational means to be assured hereof than I have that any other Book is uncorrupted For though I have a greater degree of rational and humane Assurance of that than this in regard of divers considerations which make it more credible That the Scripture hath been preserved from any material alteration yet my assurance of both is of the same kind and condition both Moral assurances and neither Physical or Mathematical 25. To the next argument the Reply is obvious That though we do not believe the Books of Scripture to be Canonical because they say so For other Books that are not Canonical may say they are and those that are so may say nothing of it yet we believe not this upon the Authority of your Church but upon the Credibility of Universal Tradition which is a thing Credible of it self and therefore fit to be rested on whereas the Authority of your Church is not so And therefore your rest thereon is not rational but meerly voluntary I might as well rest upon the judgment of the next man I meet or upon a chance of a Lottery for it For by this means I only know I might Err but by relying on you I know I should Err. But yet to return you one suppose for another suppose I should for this and all other things submit to her direction how could she assure me that I should not be mis-led by doing so She pretends indeed infallibility herein but how can she assure us that she hath it What by Scriptures That you say cannot assure us of its own Infallibility and therefore not of yours What then by Reason That you say may deceive in other things and why not in this How then will she assure us hereof By saying so Of this very affirmation there will remain the same Question still How it can prove it self to be infallibly true Neither can there be an end of the like multiplied Demands till we rest in something evident of it self which demonstrates to the World that this Church is infallible And seeing there is no such Rock for the Infallibility of this Church to be setled on it must of necessity like the Island of Delos flote up and down for ever And yet upon this point according to Papists all other Controversies in Faith depend 26. To the 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 § The sum and substance of the Ten next Paragraphs is this That it appears by the Confessions of some Protestants and the Contentions of others that the Questions about the Canon of Scripture what it is and about the Various reading and Translations of it which is true and which not are not to be determined by Scripture and therefore that all Controversies of Religion are not decidable by Scripture 27. To which I have already answered saying That when Scripture is affirmed to be the rule by which all Controversies of Religion are to be decided Those are to be excepted out of this generality which are concerning the Scripture it self For as that general saying of Scripture He hath put all things under his Feet is most true though yet S. Paul tells us That when it is said he hath put all things under him it is manifest he is excepted who did put all things under him So when we say that all Controversies of Religion are decidable by the Scripture it is manifest to all but Cavillers that we do and must except from this generality those which are touching the Scripture it self Just as a Merchant shewing a Ship of his own may say all my substance is in this Ship and yet never intended to deny that his Ship is part of his substance nor yet to say that his Ship is in it self Or as a man may
Testament I believed by Fame strengthened with Celebrity and Consent even of those which in other things are at infinite variance one with another and lastly by Antiquity which gives an Universal and a constant attestation to them But every one may see that you so few in comparison of all those upon whose consent we ground our belief of Scripture so turbulent that you damn all to the Fire and to Hell that any way differ from you that you profess it is lawful for you to use violence and power whensoever you can have it for the planting of your own Doctrine and the extirpation of the contrary lastly so new in many of your Doctrines as in the lawfulness and expedience of debarring the Laity the Sacramental Cup the lawfulness and expedience of your Latine Service Transubstantiation Indulgences Purgatory the Popes infallibility his Authority over Kings c so new I say in comparison of the undoubted Books of Scripture which evidently containeth or rather is our Religion and the sole and adequate object of our Faith I say every one may see that you so few so turbulent so new can produce nothing deserving authority with wise and considerate men What madness is this Believe them the consent of Christians which are now and have been ever since Christ in the World that we ought to believe Christ but learn of us what Christ said which contradict and damn all other parts of Christendom Why I beseech you Surely if they were not at all and could not teach me any thing I would more easily persuade my self that I were not to believe in Christ than that I should learn any thing concerning him from any other than them by whom I believed him at least than that I should learn what his Religion was from you who have wronged so exceedingly his Miracles and his Doctrine by forging so evidently so many false Miracles for the Confirmation of your new Doctrine which might give us just occasion had we no other assurance of them but your Authority to suspect the true ones Who with forging so many false Stories and false Authors have taken a fair way to make the Faith of all Stories questionable if we had no other ground for our belief of them but your Authority who have brought in Doctrines plainly and directly contrary to that which you confess to be the Word of Christ and which for the most part make either for the honour or profit of the Teachers of them which if there were no difference between the Christian and the Roman Church would be very apt to make suspicious men believe that Christian Religion was a humane invention taught by some cunning Impostors only to make themselves rich and powerful who make a profession of corrupting all sorts of Authors a ready course to make it justly questionable whether any remain uncorrupted For if you take this Authority upon you upon the six Ages last past how shall we know that the Church of that time did not Usurp the same Authority upon the Authors of the six last Ages before them and so upwards until we come to Christ himself Whose questioned Doctrines none of them came from the Fountain of Apostolick Tradition but have insinuated themselves into the Streams by little and little some in one Age and some in another some more Anciently some more lately and some yet are Embrio's yet hatching and in the Shell as the Popes Infallibility the Blessed Virgins immaculate conception the Popes power over the Temporalities of Kings the Doctrine of Predetermination c. all which yet are or in time may be imposed upon Christians under the Title of Original and Apostolick Tradition and that with that necessity that they are told they were as good believe nothing at all as not believe these things to have come from the Apostles which they know to have been brought in but yesterday which whether it be not a ready and likely way to make men conclude thus with themselves I am told that I were as good believe nothing at all as believe some points which the Church teaches me and not others and some things which she teaches to be Ancient and Certain I plainly see to be New and False therefore I will believe nothing at all Whether I say the foresaid grounds be not a ready and likely way to make men conclude thus and whether this conclusion be not too often made in Italy and Spain and France and in England too I leave it to the judgment of those that have Wisdom and Experience Seeing therefore the Roman Church is so far from being a sufficient Foundation for our belief in Christ that it is in sundry regards a dangerous temptation against it why should I not much rather conclude Seeing we receive not the knowledg of Christ and Scriptures from the Church of Rome neither from her must we take his Doctrine or the Interpretation of Scripture 102. Ad § 19. In this number this Argument is contained The Judge of Controversies ought to be intelligible to learned and unlearned The Scripture is not so and the Church is so Therefore the Church is the Judge and not the Scripture 103. To this I answer As to be understandible is a condition requisite to a Judge so is not that alone sufficient to make a Judge otherwise you might make your self Judge of Controversies by arguing The Scripture is not intelligible by all but I am therefore I am Judge of Controversies If you say your intent was to conclude against the Scripture and not for the Church I demand why then but to delude the simple with Sopistry did you say in the close of this § Such is the Church and the Scripture is not such but that you would leave it to them to infer in the end which indeed was more than you undertook in the beginning Therefore the Church is Judge and the Scripture not I say Secondly that you still run upon a false supposition that God hath appointed some Judge of all Controversies that may happen among Christians about the sense of obscure Texts of Scripture whereas he has left every one to his liberty herein in those words of S. Paul Quisque abundet in sensu suo c. I say Thirdly Whereas some Protestants make the Scripture Judge of Controversies that they have the Authority of Fathers to warrant their manner of speaking as of * Contra Parmen l. 5. in Prin. Optatus 104. But speaking truly and properly the Scripture is not a Judge nor cannot be but only a sufficient Rule for those to judge by that believe it to be the word of God as the Church of England and the Church of Rome both do what they are to believe and what they are not to believe I say sufficiently perfect and sufficiently intellible in things necessary to all that have understanding whether they be learned or unlearned And my reason hereof is convincing and demonstrative because nothing is necessary to be believed
that the Learned cannot agree about the sense of them And then they are written all in such Languages which the ignorant understand not and therefore must of necessity rely herein upon the uncertain and fallible authority of some particular men who inform them that there is such a Decree And if the Decrees were Translated into Vulgar Languages why the Translators should not be as fallible as you say the Translators of Scripture are who can possibly imagine 109. Lastly how shall an unlearned man or indeed any man be assured of the certainty of that Decree the certainty whereof depends upon suppositions which are impossible to be known whether they be true or no For it is not the Decree of a Council unless it be confirmed by a true Pope Now the Pope cannot be a true Pope if he came in by Simony which whether he did or no who can answer me He cannot be a true Pope unless he were Baptized and Baptized he was not unless the Minister had due Intention So likewise he cannot be a true Pope unless he were rightly ordained Priest and that again depends upon the Ordainers secret Intention and also upon his having the Episcopal Character All which things as I have formerly proved depend upon so many uncertain suppositions that no humane judgment can possibly be resolved in them I conclude therefore that not the learnedst man amongst you all no not the Pope himself can according to the grounds you go upon have any certainty that any Decree of any Council is good and valid and consequently not any assurance that it is indeed the Decree of a Council 110. Ad § 20. C. M. By referring Controversies to Scripture alone all is finally reduced to the internal private Spirit I HIL If by a private Spirit you mean a particular persuasion that a Doctrine is true which some men pretend but cannot prove to come from the Spirit of God I say to refer Controversies to the Scripture is not to refer them to this kind of private Spirit For is there not a manifest difference between saying the Spirit of God tells me that this is the meaning of such a Text which no man can possibly know to be true it being a secret thing and between saying these and these Reasons I have to shew that this or that is true Doctrine or that this or that is the meaning of such a Scripture Reason being a publick and certain thing and exposed to all mens Trial and Examination But now if by private Spirit you understand every Mans particular Reason then your first and second inconvenience will presently be reduced to one and shortly to none at all 111. Ad § 21. C. M. By taking the Office of Judicature from the Church it is Conferred upon every particular Man I HIL And does not also giving the Office of Judicature to the Church come to confer it upon every particular Man For before any man believes the Church Infallible must he not have reason to induce him to believe it to be so and must he not judge of those reasons whether they be indeed good and firm or Captious and Sophistical Or would you have all men believe all your Doctrine upon the Churches Infallibility and the Churches Infallibility they know not why 112. Secondly supposing they are to be guided by the Church they must use their own particular reason to find out which is the Church And to that purpose you your selves give a great many Notes which you pretend first to be Certain Notes of the Church and then to be peculiar to your Church and agreeable to none else but you do not so much as pretend that either of those pretences is evident of it self and therefore you go about to prove them both by reasons and those reasons I hope every particular man is to judge of whether they do indeed conclude and convince that which they are alledged for that is that these marks are indeed certain Notes of the Church and then that your Church hath them and no other 113. One of these Notes indeed the only Note of a true and uncorrupted Church is conformity with Antiquity I mean the most Ancient Church of all that is the Primitive and Apostolick Now how is it possible any man should examine your Church by this Note but he must by his own particular judgment find out what was the Doctrine of the Primitive Church and what is the Doctrine of the present Church and be able to answer all these Arguments which are brought to prove repugnance between them otherwise he shall but pretend to make use of this Note for the finding the true Church but indeed make no use of it but receive the Church at a venture as the most of you do not one in a Hundred being able to give any tolerable reason for it So that instead of reducing Men to particular reason you reduce them to none at all but to chance and passion and prejudice and such other ways which if they lead one to the Truth they lead Hundreds nay Thousands to Falshood But it is a pretty thing to consider how these men can blow Hot and Cold out of the same mouth to serve several purposes Is there hope of gaining a Proselyte Then they will tell you God hath given every every man Reason to follow and if the Blind lead the Blind both shall fall into the Ditch That it is no good reason for a mans Religion that he was Born and brought up in it For then a Turk should have as much reason to be a Turk as a Christian to be a Christian That every man hath a judgment of Discretion which if they will make use of they shall easily find that the true Church hath always such and such marks and that their Church has them and no other but theirs But then if any of theirs be persuaded to a sincere and sufficient Trial of their Church even by their own Notes of it and to try whether they be indeed so conformable to Antiquity as they pretend then their Note is changed you must not use your own reason nor your judgment but refer all to the Church and believe her to be conformable to Antiquity though they have no reason for it nay though they have evident reason to the contrary For my part I am certain that God hath given us our Reason to discern between Truth and Falshood and he that makes not this use of it but believes things he knows not why I say it is by chance that he believes the Truth and not by choice and that I cannot but fear that God will not accept of this Sacrifice of Fools 114. But you that would not have men follow their Reason what would you have them to follow their Passion Or pluck out their eyes and go blindfold No you say you would have them follow Authority On Gods name let them we also would have them follow Authority for it is upon the
Authority of Universal Tradition that we would have them believe Scripture But then as for the Authority which you would have them follow you will let them see reason why they should follow it And is not this to go a little about to leave reason for a short turn and then to come to it again and to do that which you condemn in others It being indeed a plain impossibility for any man to submit his reason but to reason for he that does it to Authority must of necessity think himself to have greater reason to believe that Authority Therefore the confession cited by Brerely you need not think to have been extorted from Luther and the rest It came very freely from them and what they say you practise as much as they 115. And whereas you say that a Protestant admits of Fathers Councils Church as far as they agree with Scripture which upon the matter is himself I say you admit neither of them nor the Scripture it self but only so far as it agrees with your Church and your Church you admit because you think you have reason to do so so that by you as well as by Protestants all is finally resolved into your own reason 116. Nor do Hereticks only but Romish Catholicks also set up as many Judges as there are Men and Women in the Christian World For do not your Men and Women Judge your Religion to be true before they believe it as well as the Men and Women of other Religions Oh but you say They receive it not because they think it agreeable to Scripture but because the Church tells them so But then I hope they believe the Church because their own reason tells them they are to do so So that the difference between a Papist and a Protestant is this not that the one judges and the other does not judge but that the one judges his guide to be infallible the other his way to be manifest This same pernitious Doctrine is taught by Brentius Zanchius Cartwright and others It is so in very deed But it is taught also by some others whom you little think of It is taught by S. Paul where he says Try all things hold fast that which is good It is taught by S. John in these words Believe not every Spirit but try the Spirits whether they be of God or no. It is taught by S. Peter in these Be ye ready to render a reason of the hope that is in you Lastly this very pernitious Doctrine is taught by our Saviour in these words If the Blind lead the Blind both shall fall into the Ditch And why of your selves Judge you not what is right All which speeches if they do not advise men to make use of their Reason for the choice of their Religion I must confess my self to understand nothing Lastly not to be infinite it is taught by M. Knot himself not in one Page only or Chapter of his Book but all his Book over the very writing and publishing whereof supposeth this for certain that the Readers are to be Judges whether his Reasons which he brings be strong and convincing of which sort we have hitherto met with none or else captious or impertinences as indifferent men shall as I suppose have cause to judge them 117. But you demand What good Statesmen would they be who should ideate or fancy such a Commonwealth as these men have framed to themselves a Church Truly if this be all the fault they have that they say Every man is to use his own judgment in the choice of his Religion and not to believe this or that sense of Scripture upon the bare Authority of any Learned man or men when he conceives he has reasons to the contrary which are of more weight than their Authority I know no reason but notwithstanding all this they might be as good Statesmen as any of the Society But what has this to do with Common-wealths where men are bound only to external obedience unto the Laws and Judgments of Courts but not to an internal approbation of them no nor to conceal their Judgment of them if they disapprove them As if I conceived I had reason to mislike the Law of punishing simple Theft with Death as Sir Thomas Moore did I might profess lawfully my judgment and represent my reasons to the King or Common-wealth in a Parliament as Sir Thomas Moore did without committing any fault or fearing any punishment 118. To that place of S. Austin you cite lib. 32. cont Faust You see that you go about to overthrow all Authority of Scripture and that every mans mind may be to himself a Rule what he is to allow or disallow in every Scripture I shall need give no other Reply but only to desire you to speak like an honest man and to say whether it be all one for a man to allow and disallow in every Scripture what he pleases which is either to dash out of Scripture such Texts or such Chapters because they cross his opinion or to say which is worse Though they be Scripture they are not true Whether I say for a man thus to allow and disallow in Scripture what he pleases be all one and no greater fault than to allow that sense of Scripture which he conceives to be true and genuine and deduced out of the words and to disallow the contrary for Gods sake Sir tell me plainly In those Texts of Scripture which you alledge for the infallibility of your Church do not you allow what sense you think true and disallow the contrary And do you not this by the direction of your private reason If you do why do you condemn it in others If you do not I pray you tell me what direction you follow or whether you follow none at all If none at all this is like drawing Lots or throwing the Dice for the choice of a Religion If any other I beseech you tell me what it is Perhaps you will say the Churches Authority and that will be to dance finely in a round thus To believe the Churches Infallible Authority because the Scriptures avouch it and to believe that Scriptures say and mean so because they are so expounded by the Church Is not this for a Father to beget his Son and the Son to beget his Father For a foundation to support the house and the house to support the foundation Would not Campian have cryed out at it Ecce quos gyros quos Maeandros And to what end was this going about when you might as well at first have concluded the Church infallible because she says so as thus to put in Scripture for a meer stale and to say the Church is infallible because the Scripture says so and the Scripture means so because the Church says so which is infallible Is it not most evident therefore to every intelligent man that you are enforced of necessity to do that your self which so Tragically you declaim against in others The
either your Church or Pope in as much as there is no more repugnance between the Scriptures existence and our infallibility than there is between theirs 138. Obj. But if Protestants will have the Scripture alone for their Judge let them first produce some Scripture affirming that by the entrance thereof infallibility went out of the Church Ans This Argument put in form runs thus No Scripture affirms that by the entring thereof infallibility went out of the Church Therefore there is an infallible Church and therefore the Scripture alone is not Judge that is the Rule to judge by But as no Scripture affirms that by the entring of it Infallibility went out of the Church so neither do we neither have we any need to do so But we say that it continued in the Church even together with the Scriptures so long as Christ and his Apostles were living and then departed God in his providence having provided a plain and infallible Rule to supply the defect of living and infallible Guides 141. But the Jewish Church retained Infallibility in her self and therefore it is unjust to deprive the Church of Christ of it Ans That the Jews had sometimes an infallible miraculous direction from God in some cases of moment he doth affirm and had good warrant but that the Synagogue was absolutely Infallible he no where affirms and therefore it is unjustly and unworthily done of you to obtrude it upon him And indeed how can the Infallibility of the Synagogue be conceived but only by setling it in the High Priest and the company adhering and subordinate unto him And whether the High Priest was Infallible when he believed not Christ to be the Messias but condemned and excommunicated them that so professed and caused him to be crucified for saying so I leave it to Christians to judge But then suppose God had been so pleased to do as he did not to appoint the Synagouge an infallible guide Could you by your rules of Logick constrain him to appoint such a one to Christians also or say unto him that in wisdom he could not do otherwise Vain man that will be thus always tying God to your imaginations It is well for us that he leaves us not without directions to him but if he will do this sometime by living Guides sometime by written Rules what is that to you may not he do what he will with his own 144. Ad § 24. Neither is this Discourse if you mean your Conclusion that Your Church is the infallible Judge in Controversies confirmed by Irenaeus at all Iren. l. 3. c. 3. For neither has Irenaeus one syllable to this purpose neither can it be deduced out of what he says with any colour of consequence For first in saying What if the Apostles had not left Scripture ought we not to have followed the Order of Tradition And in saying That to this Order many Nations yield assent who believe in Christ having Salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit of God without Letters or Ink and diligently keeping ancient Tradition Doth he not plainly shew that the Tradition he speaks of is nothing else but the very same that is written nothing but to believe in Christ To which whether Scripture alone to them that believe it be not a sufficient guide I leave it to you to judge And are not his words just as if a man should say If God had not given us the light of the Sun we must have made use of Candles and Torches If we had had no Eyes we must have felt out our way If we had no Leggs we must have used Crutches And doth not this in effect import that while we have the Sun we need no Candles While we have our Eyes we need not feel out our way While we enjoy our Leggs we need not Crutches And by like reason Irenaeus in saying If we had no Scripture we must have followed Tradition and they that have none do well to do so doth he not plainly import that to them that have Scripture and believe it Tradition is unnecessary which could not be if the Scripture did not contain evidently the whole tradion Which whether Irenaeus believed or no these words of his may inform you Non enim per alios c. we have received the disposition of our Salvation from no others but from them by whom the Gospel came unto us Which Gospel truly the Apostles first preached and afterwards by the will of God delivered in writing to us to be the Pillar and Foundation of our Faith Bellarm. de verbo Dei l. 4 c. 11. Upon which place Bellarmine's two observations and his acknowledgment ensuing upon them are very considerable and as I conceive as home to my purpose as I would wish them His first Notandum is That in the Christian Doctrin some things are simply necessary for the Salvation of all men as the knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed and besides the knowledge of the ten Commandments and some of the Sacraments Other things not so necessary but that a man may be saved without the explicit knowledge and belief and profession of them His Second Note is That those things which were simply necessary the Apostles were wont to preach to all men But of other things not all to all but something to all to wit those things which were profitable for all other things only to Prelats and Priests These things premised he acknowledgeth That all those things were written by the Apostles which are necessary for all and which they were wont openly to preach to all But that other things were not all written And therefore when Irenaeus says that the Apostles wrote what they Preach in the World it is true saith he and not against Traditions because they preached not to the People all things but only those things which were necessary or profitable for them 145. So that at the most you can infer from hence but only a suppositive necessity of having an infallible Guide and that grounded upon a false supposition In case we had no Scripture but an absolute necessity hereof and to them who have and believe the Scripture which is your assumption cannot with any colour from hence be concluded but rather the contrary 146. Neither because as he says it was then easie to receive the Truth from Gods Church then in the Age next after the Apostles Then when all the ancient and Apostolick Churches were at an agreement about the Fundamentals of Faith Will it therefore follow that now 1600 years after when the ancient Churches are divided almost into as many Religions as they are Churches every one being the Church to it self and heretical to all other that it is as easie but extremely difficult or rather impossible to find the Church first independently of the true Doctrin and then to find the truth by the Church 148. Neither will the Apostles depositing with the Church all things belonging to truth be any proof
nothing unwritten which can go in upon half so fair Cards for the Title of Apostolick Tradition as these things which by the confession of both Sides are not so I mean the Doctrine of the Millinaries and of the necessity of the Eucharist for Infants 156. Yet when we say the Scripture is the only Rule to Judge all Controversies by methinks you should easily conceive that we would be understood of all those that are possible to be Judged by Scripture and of those that arise among such as believe the Scripture For if I had a Controversie with an Atheist whether there were a God or no I would not say that the Scripture were a Rule to judge this by seeing that doubting whether there be a God or no he must needs doubt whether the Scripture be the Word of God or if he does not he grants the Question and is not the man we speak of So likewise if I had a Controversie about the Truth of Christ with a Jew it would be vainly done of me should I press him with the Authority of the New Testament which he believes not until out of some Principles common to us both I had persuaded him that it is the Word of God The New Testament therefore while he remains a Jew would not be a fit Rule to decide this Controversie In as much as that which is doubted of it self is not fit to determine other doubts So likewise if there were any that believed Christian Religion and yet believed not the Bible to be the Word of God though they believed the matter of it to be true which is no impossible supposition for I may believe a Book of S. Austines to contain nothing but the Truth of God and yet not to have been inspired by God himself against such men therefore there were no disputing out of the Bible because nothing in question can be a proof to it self When therefore we say the Scripture is a sufficient means to determine all Controversies we say not this either to Atheists Jews Turks or such Christians if there be any such as believe not Scripture to be the Word of God But among such men only as are already agreed upon this That the Scripture is the Word of God we say all Controversies that arise about Faith are either not at all decidable and consequently not necessary to be believed one way or other or they may be determined by Scripture In a Word That all things necessary to be believed are evidently contained in Scripture and what is not there evidently contained cannot be necessary to be believed And our reason hereof is convincing because nothing can Challenge our belief but what hath descended to us from Christ by Original and Universal Tradition Now nothing but Scripture hath thus descended to us Therefore nothing but Scripture can Challenge our belief Now then to come up closer to you and to answer to your Question not as you put it but as you should have put it I say That this position Scripture alone is the Rule whereby they which believe it to be Gods Word are to judge all Controversies in Faith is no fundamental point Though not for your Reasons For your first and strongest reason you see is plainly voided and cut off by my stating of the Question as I have done and supposing in it that the parties at variance are agreed about this That the Scripture is the Word of God and consequently that this is none of their Controversies To your second That Controversies cannot be ended without some living Authority We have said already that necessary Controversies may be and are decided And if they be not ended this is not through defect of the Rule but through the default of Men. And for these that cannot thus be ended it is not necessary they should be ended For if God did require the ending of them he would have provided some certain means for the ending of them And to your Third I say that your pretence of using these means is but hypocrital for you use them with prejudice and with a setled resolution not to believe any thing which these means happily may suggest into you if it any way cross your pre-conceived perswasion of your Churches infallibility You give not your selves liberty of judgment in the use of them nor suffer your selves to be led by them to the Truth to which they would lead you would you but be as willing to believe this consequence Our Church doth oppose Scripture therefore it doth err therefore it is not Infallible as you are resolute to believe this The Church is Infallible therefore it doth not err and therefore it doth not oppose Scripture though it seem to do so never so plainly 157. You pray but it is not that God would bring you to the true Religion but that he would confirm you in your own You confer places but it is that you may confirm or colour over with plausible disguises your erroneous doctrine not that you may judge of them and forsake them if there be reason for it You consult the Originals but you regard them not when they make against your Doctrin or Translation 159. Notwithstanding though not for these reasons yet for others I conceive this Doctrin not Fundamental Because if a man should believe Christian Religion wholly and entirely and live according to it such a man though he should not know or not believe the Scripture to be a Rule of Faith no nor to be the Word of God my opinion is he may be saved and my reason is because he performs the entire condition of the new Covenant which is that we believe the matter of the Gospel and not that it is contained in these or these Books So that the Books of Scripture are not so much the objects of our Faith as the instruments of conveying it to our understanding and not so much of the being of the Christian Doctrin as requisite to the well-being of it Iraeneus tells us as M. K. acknowledgeth of some barbarous Nations that believed the Doctrin of Christ and yet believed not the Scripture to be the Word of God for they never heard of it and Faith comes by hearing But these barbarous people might be saved therefore men might be saved without believing the Scripture to be the Word of God much more without believing it to be a Rule and a perfect Rule of Faith Neither doubt I but if the Books of Scripture had been proposed to them by the other parts of the Church where they had been before received and had been doubted of or even rejected by those barbarous Nations but still by the bare belief and practice of Christianity they might be saved God requiring of us under pain of damnation only to believe the verities therein contained and not the divine Authority of the Books wherein they are contained Not but that it were now very strange and unreasonable if a man should believe the matter of these
writings be as fit for such a purpose as the Decrees of your Doctors Surely their intent in writing was to conserve us in unity of Faith and to keep us from Error and we are sure God spake in them but your Doctors from whence they are we are not so certain Was the Holy Ghost then unwilling or unable to direct them so that their writings should be fit and sufficient to attain that end they aimed at in writing For if he were both able and willing to do so then certainly he did do so And then their writings may be very sufficient means if we would use them as we should do to preserve us in unity in all necessary points of Faith and to guard us from all pernitious Error 81. If yet you be not satisfied but will still pretend that all these words by you cited seem clearly enough to prove that the Church is Universally infallible without which Unity of Faith could not be conserved against every wind of Doctrin I Ans That to you which will not understand that there can be any means to conserve the unity of Faith but only that which conserves your authority over the Faithful it is no marvel that these words seem to prove that the Church nay that your Church is universally Infallible But we that have no such end no such desires but are willing to leave all men to their liberty provided they will not improve it to a Tyranny over others we find it no difficulty to discern between dedit and promisit he gave at his Ascension and he promised to the Worlds end Besides though you whom it concerns may happily flatter your selves that you have not only Pastors and Doctors but Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists and those distinct from the former still in your Church yet we that are disinteressed persons cannot but smile at these strange imaginations Lastly though you are apt to think your selves such necessary instruments for all good purposes and that nothing can be well done unless you do it that no unity or constancy in Religion can be maintained but inevitably Christendom must fall to ruin and confusion unless you support it yet we that are indifferent and impartial and well content that God should give us his own favours by means of his own appointment not of our choosing can easily collect out of these very words that not the Infallibility of your or of any Church but the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists c. which Christ gave upon his Ascension were designed by him for the compassing all these excellent purposes by their preaching while they lived and by their writings for ever And if they fail hereof the Reason is not any insufficiency or invalidity in the means but the voluntary perversness of the Subjects they have to deal with who if they would be themselves and be content that others should be in the choice of their Religion the servants of God and not of men if they would allow that the way to Heaven is no narrower now than Christ left it his yoak no heavier than he made it that the belief of no more difficulties is required now to Salvation than was in the Primitive Church that no Error is in it self destructive and exclusive from Salvation now which was not then if instead of being zealous Papists earnest Calvinists rigid Lutherans they would become themselves and be content that others should be plain and honest Christians if all men would believe the Scripture and freeing themselves from prejudice and passion would sincerely endeavour to find the true sense of it and live according to it and require no more of others but to do so nor denying their Communion to any that do so would so order their publick service of God that all which do so may without scruple or hypocrisie or protestation against any part of it joyn with them in it who does not see that seeing as we suppose here and shall prove hereafter all necessary Truths are plainly and evidently set down in Scripture there would of necessity be among all men in all things necessary unity of Opinion And notwithstanding any other differences that are or could be unity of Communion and Charity and mutual Toleration By which means all Schism and Heresie would be banished the World and those wretched contentions which now rend and tear in pieces not the Coat but the Members and Bowels of Christ which mutual pride and Tyranny and cursing and killing and damning would fain make immortal should speedily receive a most blessed Catastrophe But of this hereafter when we shall come to the question of Schism wherein I perswade my self that I shall plainly shew that the most vehement accusers are the greatest offenders and that they are indeed at this time the greatest Schismaticks who make the way to Heaven narrower the yoak of Christ heavier the differences of Faith greater the conditions of Ecclesiastical Communion harder and stricter than they were made at the beginning by Christ and his Apostles they who talk of Unity but aim at Tyranny and will have peace with none but with Slaves and Vassals In the mean while though I have shewed how Unity of Faith and Unity of Charity too may be preserved without your Churches Infallibility yet seeing you modestly conclude from hence not that your Church is but only seems to be universally Infallible meaning to your self of which you are a better judge than I Therefore I willingly grant your conclusion and proceed 86. As for your pretence That to find the meaning of those places you confer divers Texts you consult Originals you examin Translations and use all the means by Protestants appointed I have told you before that all this is vain and hypocritical if as your manner and your doctrin is you give not your self liberty of judgment in the use of these means if you make not your selves Judges of but only Advocates for the doctrin of your Church refusing to see what these means shew you if it any way make against the doctrin of your Church though it be as clear as the light at noon Remove prejudice even the ballance and hold it even make it indifferent to you which way you go to heaven so you go the true which Religion be true so you be of it then use the means and pray for Gods assistance and as sure as God is true you shall be lead into all necessary Truth 88. Whereas you say that it were great impiety to imagin that God the lover of Souls hath left no certain infallible means to decide both this and all other differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion I desire you to take heed you commit not an impiety in making more impieties than Gods Commandments make Certainly God is no way obliged either by his promise or his love to give us all things that we may imagine would be convenient for us as formerly I have proved at large
Infallibility upon what other motive do you rely Do not you cite Scripture or Tradition or both on both sides And do you not pretend that both these are the infallible Truths of Almighty God 51. You close up this Section with a fallacy proving forsooth that we destroy by our confession the Church which is the House of God because we stand only upon Fundamental Articles which cannot make up the whole Fabrick of the Faith no more than the Foundation of a House alone can be a House 52. But I hope Sir you will not be difficult in granting that that is a House which hath all the necessary parts belonging to a House now by Fundamental Articles we mean all those which are necessary and then I hope you will grant that we may safely expect Salvation in a Church which hath all things Fundamental to Salvation Unless you will say that more is necessary than that which is necessary 53. Ad § 19. This long discourse is to shew that Protestants give unavoidable occasion of desperation to poor Souls and brings in a Man desirous to save his Soul asking Questions of D. P. and makes answers for him As first if he required whose directions he might rely upon He says the Doctor 's Answer would be upon the truly Catholick Church But I suppose upon better reason because I know his mind that he would advise him to call no man Master upon Earth but according to Christs command to rely upon the direction of God himself If he ask where he should find this direction he would answer him In his Word contained in Scripture If he should inquire what assurance he might have that the Scripture is the Word of God He would answer him that the Doctrine it self is very fit and worthy to be thought to come from God nec vox hominem sonat and that they which wrote and delivered it confirmed it to be the Word of God by doing such works as could not be done but by Power from God himself For assurance of the Truth hereof he would advise him to rely upon that which all Wise Men in all matters of belief rely upon and that is the consent of Ancient records and Universal Tradition No Wise Man doubts but there was such a man as Julius Caesar or Cicero that there are such Cities as Rome or Constantinople though he have no other assurance for the one or the other but only the speech of People This Tradition therefore he would counsel him to rely upon and to believe that the Book which we call Scripture was confirmed abundantly by the Works of God to be the Word of God Believing it the Word of God he must of necessity believe it true and if he believe it true he must believe it contains all necessary directions unto Eternal Happiness because it affirms it self to do so Nay he might tell him that so far is the whole Book from wanting any necessary direction to his Eternal Salvation that one only Author that hath writ but two little Books of it Saint Luke by name in the beginning of his Gospel and in the beginning of his Story shews plainly that he alone hath written at least so much as is necessary And what they wrote they wrote by Gods direction for the direction fo the World not only for the Learned but for all that would do their true endeavour to know the will of God and to do it therefore you cannot but conceive that writing to all and for all they wrote so as that in things necessary they might be understood by all Besides that here he should find that God himself has engaged himself by promise that if he would love him and keep his Commandments and pray earnestly for his Spirit and be willing to be directed by it he should undoubtedly receive it even the Spirit of Truth which shall lead him into all Truth that is certainly into all necessary Truths and suffer him to fall into no pernitious Error The sum of his whole direction to him briefly would be this Believe the Scripture to be the Word of God use your true endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it and then you may rest securely that you are in the true way to Eternal Happiness This is the substance of that Answer which the Doctor would make to any man in this case and this is a way so plain that Fools unless they will cannot Err from it Because not knowing absolutely all truth nay not all profitable truth and not being free from Error but endeavouring to know the truth and obey it and endeavouring to be free from Error is by this way made the only condition of Salvation 56. Neither is this to drive any man to desparation unless it be such a one as hath such a strong affection to this word Church that he will not go to Heaven unless he hath a Church to lead him thither For what though a Council may Err and the whole Church cannot be consulted with yet this is not to send you on the Fools Pilgrimage for Faith and bid you go and confer with every Christian Soul Man and Woman by Sea and 〈◊〉 Land close Prisoner or at Liberty as you dilate the ma◠〈◊〉 But to tell you very briefly that Universal Tradition directs you to the Word of God and the Word of God directs you to Heaven 57. To the next demand How stall I know whether he hold all Fundamental points or no When Protestants answer If he truly believe the undoubted Books of Canonical Scripture he cannot but believe all Fundamentals and that it is very probable that the Creed contains all the Fundamentals of simple belief The Jesuite takes no notice of the former but takes occasion from the latter to ask Shall I hazard my Soul on Probabilities or even Wagers As if whatsoever is but probable though in the highest degree of Probability were as likely to be false as true or because it is but Morally not Mathematically certain that there was such a Woman as Q. Elizabeth such a man as Hen. the 8th that is in the highest degree probable therefore it were an even Wager there were none such By this Reason seeing the truth of your whole Religion depends finally upon Prudential motives which you do but pretend to be very credible it will be an even Wager that your Religion is false And by the same Reason or rather infinitely greater seeing it is impossible for any man according to the grounds of your Religion to know himself much less another to be a true Pope or a true Priest nay to have a Moral certainty of it because these things are obnoxious to innumerable secret and undiscernable nullities it will be an even Wager nay if we proportion things indifferently a hundred to one that every Consecration and Absolution of yours is void and that whensoever you adore the Host you and your Assistants commit Idolatry That there is a
revocation of the former For had you made the matter of Faith either naturally or supernaturally evident it might have been a fitly attempered and duly proportioned object for an absolute certainty natural or supernatural But requiring as you do that Faith should be an absolute knowledge of a thing not absolutely known an infallible certainty of a thing which though it is in it self yet is it not made appear to us to be infallibly certain to my understanding you speak impossibilities And truly for one of your Religion to do so is but a good Decorum For the matter and object of your Faith being so full of contradictions a contradictious Faith may very well become a contradictious Religion Your Faith therefore if you please to have it so let it be a free necessitated certain uncertain evident obscure prudent and foolish natural and supernatural unnatural assent But they which are unwilling to believe nonsense themselves or to persuade others to do so it is but reason they should make the Faith wherewith they believe an intelligible compossible consistent thing and not define it by repugnances Now nothing is more repugnant than that a man should be required to give most certain credit unto that which cannot be made apppear most certainly credible and if it appear to him to be so then is it not obscure that it is so For if you speak of an acquired rational discursive Faith certainly these Reasons which make the object seem credible must be the cause of it and consequently the strength and firmity of my assent must rise and fall together with the apparent credibility of the object If you speak of a supernatural infused Faith then you either suppose it infused by the former means and then that which was said before must be said again for whatsoever effect is wrought meerly by means must bear proportion to and cannot exceed the vertue of the means by which it is wrought As nothing by water can be made more cold than water nor by fire more hot than fire nor by honey more sweet than honey nor by gall more bitter than gall Or if you will suppose it infused without means then that power which infuseth into the understanding assent which bears Analogy to sight in the eye must also infuse evidence that is Visibility into the Object and look what degree of assent is infused into the understanding at least the same degree of evidence must be infused into the Object And for you to require a strength of credit beyond the appearance of the Objects credibility is all one as if you should require me to go Ten Miles an hour upon a Horse that will go but five to discern a man certainly through a mist or cloud that makes him not certainly discernable To hear a sound more clearly than it is audible to understand a thing more fully than it is intelligible and he that doth so I may well expect that his next injunction will be that I must see something that is invisible hear something inaudible understand something that is wholly unintelligible For he that demands ten of me knowing I have but five does in effect as if he demanded five knowing that I have none and by like reason you requiring that I should see things farther than they are visible require I should see something invisible and in requiring that I believe something more firmly than it is made to me evidently credible you require in effect that I believe something which appears to me incredible and while it does so I deny not but that I am bound to believe the truth of many Texts of Scripture the sense whereof is to me obscure and the Truth of many Articles of Faith the manner whereof is obscure and to humane understandings incomprehensible But then it is to be observed that not the sense of such Texts not the manner of these things is that which I am bound to believe but the truth of them But that I should believe the Truth of any thing the truth whereof cannot be made evident with an evidence proportionable to the degree of Faith required of me this I say for any man to be bound to is unjust and unreasonable because to do it is impossible 8. Ad § 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. Yet though I deny that it is required of us to be certain in the highest degree infallibly certain of the truth of the things which we believe for this were to know and not believe neither is it possible unless our evidence of it be it natural or supernatural were of the highest degree yet I deny not but that we are to believe the Religion of Christ we are and may be infallibly certain For first this is most certain that we are in all things to do according to wisdom and reason rather than against it Secondly this is as certain That wisdom and reason require that we should believe these things which are by many degrees more credible and probable than the contrary Thirdly this is as certain that to every man who considers impartially what great things may be said for the truth of Christianity and what poor things they are which may be said against it either for any other Religion or for none at all it cannot but appear by many degrees more credible that Christian Religion is true than the contrary And from all these premises this conclusion evidently follows that it is infallibly certain that we are firmly to believe the truth of Christian Religion 9. Your discourse therefore touching the fourth requisite to Faith which is Prudence I admit so far as to grant 1. That if we were required to believe with certainty I mean a Moral certainty things no way represented as infallible and certain I mean Morally an unreasonable obedience were required of us And so likewise were it were we required to believe as absolutely certain that which is no way represented to us as absolutely certain 2. That whom God obligeth to believe any thing he will not fail to furnish their understandings with such inducements as are sufficient it they be not negligent or perverse to persuade them to believe 3. That there is an abundance of Arguments exceedingly credible inducing men to believe the Truth of Christianity I say so credibile that though they cannot make us evidently see what we believe yet they evidently convince that in true Wisdom and Prudence the Articles of it deserve credit and ought to be accepted as things revealed by God 4. That without such reasons and inducements our choice even of the true Faith is not to be commended as prudent but to be condemned of rashness and levity 10. But then for your making Prudence not only a commendation of a believer and a justification of his Faith but also essential to it and part of the definition of it in that questionless you were mistaken and have done as if being to say what a man is you should define him A Reasonable
creature that hath skill in Astronomy For as all Astronomers are men but all men are not Astronomers and therefore Astronomy ought not to be put into the definition of men where nothing should have place but what agrees to all men So though all that are truly wise that is wise for Eternity will believe aright yet many may believe aright which are not wise I could wish with all my Heart as Moses did that all the Lords People could Prophesie That all that believe the true Religion were able according to S. Peters injunction to give a reason of the hope that is in them a reason why they hope for Eternal Happiness by this way rather than any other neither do I think it any great difficulty that men of ordinary capacities if they would give their mind to it might quickly be enabled to do so But should I affirm that all true believers can do so I suppose it would be as much against experience and modesty as it is against Truth and Charity to say as you do that they which cannot do so either are not at all or to no purpose true believers And thus we see that the foundations you build upon are ruinous and deceitful and so unfit to support your Fabrick that they destroy one another I come now to shew that your Arguments to prove Protestants Hereticks are all of the same quality with your former grounds which I will do by opposing clear and satisfying Answers in order to them 11. Ad § 13. To the first then delivered by you § 13. That Protestants must be Hereticks because they opposed divers Truths propounded for Divine by the Visible Church I Answer It is not Heresie to oppose any Truth propounded by the Church but only such a Truth as is an essential part of the Gospel of Christ 2. The Doctrines which Protestants opposed were not Truths but plain and impious falshoods Neither thirdly were they propounded as Truths by the Visible Church but only by a Part of it and that a corrupted Part. 12. Ad § 14. The next Argument in the next Particle tells us That every error against any doctrin revealed by God is damnable Heresie Now either Protestants or the Roman Church must err against the word of God But the Roman Church we grant perforce doth not err damnably neither can she because she is the Catholick Church which we you say confess cannot err damnably Therefore Protestants must err against Gods word and consequently are guilty of formal Heresie Whereunto I answer plainly that there be in this argument almost as many falshoods as assertions For neither is every error against any Doctrin revealed by God a damnable Heresie unless it be revealed publickly and plainly with a command that all should believe it 2. D. Potter no where grants that the Errors of the Roman Church are not in themselves damnable though he hopes by accident they may not actually damn some men amongst you and this you your self confess in divers places of your book where you tell us that he allows no hope of Salvation to those amongst you whom ignorance cannot excuse 3. You beg the Question twice in taking for granted First that the Roman Church is the truly Catholick Church which without much favour can hardly pass for a part of it And again that the Catholick Church cannot fall into any error of it self damnable for it may do so and still be the Catholick Church if it retain those Truths which may be an antidote against the malignity of this error to those that held it out of a simple un-affected ignorance Lastly though the thing be true yet I might well require some proof of it from you that either Protestants or the Roman Church must err against Gods word For if their contradiction be your only reason then also you or the Dominicans must be Hereticks because you contradict one another as much as Protestants and Papists 13. Ad § 15. The third Argument pretends that you have shewed already that the Visible Church is Judge of Controversies and therefore Infallible from whence you suppose that it follows that to oppose her is to oppose God To which I answer that you have said onely and not shewed that the Visible Church is Judge of Controversies And indeed how can she be judge of them if she cannot decide them And how can she decide them if it be a question whether she be judge of them That which is questioned it self cannot with any sense be pretended to be fit to decide other questions and much less this question whether it have Authority to judge and decide all questions 2. If she were judge it would not follow that she were infallible for we have many Judges in our Courts of Judicature yet none infallible Nay you cannot with any modesty deny that every man in the world ought to judge for himself what Religion is truest and yet you will not say that every man is infallible 3. If the Church were supposed Infallible yet it would not follow at all much less manifestly that to oppose her declaration is to oppose God unless you suppose also that as she is infallible so by her opposers she is known or believed to be so Lastly If all this were true as it is all most false yet were it to little purpose seeing you have omitted to prove that the Visible Church is the Roman 14. Ad § 16. Instead of a fourth Argument this is presented to us That if Luther were an Heretick then they that agreed with him must be so And that Luther was a formal Heretick you endeavor to prove by this most formal Syllogism To say the Visible Church is not Universal is properly an Heresie but Luthers Reformation was not Universal Therefore it cannot be excused from formal Heresie Whereunto I Answer first to the first part that it is no way impossible that Luther had he been the inventer and first broacher of a false Doctrin as he was not might have been a formal Heretick and yet that those who follow him may be only so materially and improperly and indeed no Hereticks Your own men out of S. Augustin distinguish between Haeretici Haereticorum sequaces And you your self though you pronounce the leaders among the Arrians formal Hereticks yet confess that Salvian was at least doubtful whether these Arrians who in simplicity followed their Teachers might not be excused by ignorance And about this suspension of his you also seem suspended for you neither approve nor condemn it Secondly to the second part I say that had you not presumed upon our ignorance in Logick as well as Metaphysicks and School Divinity you would never have obtruded upon us this rope of sand for a formal Syllogism It is even Cousin-German to this To deny the Resurrection is properly an Heresie But Luthers Reformation was not Universal Therefore it cannot be excused from formal Heresie Or to this To say the Visible Church is not Universal
it not as well as yours and whether some mens persuasion that there is no such thing can hinder them from having it or prove that they have it not if there be any such thing Any more than a mans persuasion that he has not taken Physick or Poyson will make him not to have taken it if he has or hinder the operation of it And whether Tertullian in the place quoted by you speak of a Priest made a Lay-man by a just deposition or degradation and not by a voluntary desertion of his Order And whether in the same place he set not some mark upon Hereticks that will agree to your Church Whether all the Authority of our Bishops in England before the Reformation was conferred on them by the Pope And if it were whether it were the Popes right or an Usurpation If it were his right whether by Divine Law or Ecclesiastical And if by Ecclesiastical only whether he might possibly so abuse his power as to deserve to lose it Whether de facto he had done so Whether supposing he had deserved to lose it those that deprived him of it had power to take it from him Or if not whether they had power to suspend him from the use of it until good caution were put in and good assurance given that if he had it again he would not abuse it as he had formerly done Whether in case they had done unlawfully that took his power from him it may not things being now setled and the present Government established be as unlawful to go about to restore it whether it be not a Fallacy to conclude because we believe the Pope hath no power in England now when the King and State and Church hath deprived him upon just grounds of it therefore we cannot believe that he had any before his deprivation Whether without Schism a man may not withdraw obedience from an Usurped Authority commanding unlawful things Whether the Roman Church might not give Authority to Bishops and Priests to oppose her Errors as well as a King gives Authority to a Judge to judge against him if his cause be bad as well as Trajan gave his Sword to his Prefect with this commission that if he Governed well he should use it for him if ill against Whether the Roman Church gave not Authority to her Bishops and Priests to Preach against her corruptions in manners And if so why not against her Errors in Doctrine if she had any Whether she gave them not Authority to Preach the whole Gospel of Christ and consequently against her Doctrine if it should contradict any part of the Gospel of Christ Whether it be not acknowledged lawful in the Church of Rome for any Lay-man or Woman that has ability to persuade others by Word or by Writing from Error and unto truth And why this Liberty may not be practised against their Religion if it be false as well as for it if it be true Whether any man need any other Commission or Vocation than that of a Christian to do a work of Charity And whether it be not one of the greatest works of Charity if it be done after a peaceable manner and without any unnecessary disturbance of order to persuade men out of a false unto a true way of Eternal happiness Especially the Apostle having assured us that he whosoever he is who converteth a sinner from the Error of his way shall save a Soul from Death and shall hide a multitude of Sins Whether the first Reformed Bishops died all at once so that there were not enough to ordain others in the places that were vacant Whether the Bishops of England may not Consecrate a Metropolitan of England as well as the Cardinals do the Pope whether the King or Queen of England or they that have the Government in their Hands in the minority of the Prince may not lawfully commend one to them to be consecrated against whom there is no Canonical exception Whether the Doctrine that the King is supream head of the Church of England as the Kings of Judah and the first Christian Emperors were of the Jewish and Christian Church be any new found Doctrine Whether it be not true that Bishops being made Bishops have their Authority immediately from Christ though this or that man be not made Bishop without the Kings Authority as well as you say the Pope being Pope has Authority immediately from Christ and yet this or that man cannot be made Pope without the Authority of the Cardinals Whether you do well to suppose that Christian Kings have no more Authority in ordering the affairs of the Church than the great Turk or the Pagan Emperors Whether the King may not give Authority to a Bishop to exercise his function in some part of his Kingdom and yet not be capable of doing it himself as well as a Bishop may give Authority to a Physician to practice Physick in his Diocess which the Bishop cannot do himself Whether if Nero the Emperor would have commanded S. Peter or S. Paul to Preach the Gospel of Christ and to exercise the office of a Bishop of Rome whether they would have questioned his Authority to do so Whether there were any Law of God or man that prohibited K. JAMES to give Commission to Bishops nay to lay his injunction upon them to do any thing that is lawful Whether a casual irregularity may not be lawfully dispenced with Whether the Popes irregularities if he should chance to incur any be indispensable And if not who is he or who are they whom the Pope is so subject unto that they may dispense with him Whether that be certain which you take for granted That your Ordination imprints a Character and ours doth not Whether the power of Consecrating and Ordaining by imposition of hands may not reside in the Bishops and be derived unto them not from the King but God and yet the King have Authority to command them to apply this power to such a fit person whom he shall commend unto them As well as if some Architects only had the faculty of Architecture and had it immediately by infusion from God himself yet if they were the Kings Subjects he wants not authority to command them to build him a Palace for his use or a fortress for his service Or as the King of France pretends not to have power to make Priests himself yet I hope you will not deny him power to command any of his Subjects that has this power to ordain any fit person Priest whom he shall desire to be ordained Whether it do not follow that whensoever the King commands an House to be Built a Message to be delivered or a Murtherer to be Executed that all these things are presently done without intervention of the Architect Messenger or Executioner As well as that they are ipso facto Ordained and Consecrated who by the Kings Authority are commended to the Bishops to be Ordained and Consecrated Especially seeing the King
pretend is the true sense of them When you have produced certain grounds for all these things I doubt not but it will appear that we also may have grounds certain enough to believe our whole Religion which is nothing else but the Bible without dependence on the Churches infallibility Suppose you should meet with a man that for the present believes neither Church nor Scripture nor God but is ready and willing to believe them all if you can shew some sufficient grounds to build his faith upon will you tell such a man there are no certain grounds by which he may be converted or there are If you say the first you make all Religion an uncertain thing If the second then either you must ridiculously perswade that your Church is infallible because it is infallible or else that there are other certain grounds besides your Churches infallibility 46. Obj. The Holy Scripture is in it self most true and infallible but without the direction and declaration of the Church we can neither have certain means to know what Scripture is Canonical nor what Translations be faithful nor what is the true meaning of Scripture Ans But all these things must be known before we can know the direction of your Church to be infallible for no other proof of it can be pretended but only some Texts of Canonical Scripture truly interpreted Therefore either you are mistaken in thinking there is no other means to know these things but your Churches infallible direction or we are excluded from all means of knowing her direction to be infallible 47. Obj. But Protestants though they are perswaded their own opinions are true and that they have used such means as are wont to be prescribed for understanding the Scripture as Prayer conferring of Texts c. Yet by their disagreement shew that some of them are deceived Now they hold all the Articles of their faith upon this only ground of Scripture interpreted by these rules and therefore it is clear that the ground of their faith is infallible in no point at all Ans The first of these suppositions must needs be true but the second is apparently false I mean that every Protestant is perswaded that he hath used those means which are prescribed for understanding of Scripture But that which you collect from these suppositions is clearly inconsequent and by as good Logick you might conclude that Logick and Geometry stand upon no certain grounds that the rules of the one and the principles of the other do sometimes fail because the disagreement of Logicians and Geometricians shew that some of them are deceived Might not a Jew conclude as well against all Christians that they have no certain ground whereon to relie in their understanding of Scripture because their disagreements shew that some are deceived because some deduce from it the infallibility of a Church and others no such matter So likewise a Turk might use the same argument against both Jews and Christians and an Atheist against all Religions and a Sceptick against all reason Might not the one say Mens disagreement in Religion shews that there is no certainty in any and the other that experience of their contradictions teacheth that the rules of reason do sometimes fail Do not you see and feel how void of reason and how full of impiety your sophistry is And how transported with zeal against Protestants you urge arguments against them which if they could not be answered would overthrow not only your own but all Religion But God be thanked the answer is easie and obvious For let men but remember not to impute the faults of men but only to men and then it will easily appear that there may be sufficient certainty in reason in Religion in the rules of interpreting Scripture though men through their faults take not care to make use of them and so run into divers errors and dissentions 48. Obj. But Protestants cannot determine what points be fundamental and therefore must remain uncertain whether or no they be not in some fundamental error Ans By like reason since you acknowledge that every error in points defined and declared by your Church destroys the substance of Faith and yet cannot determine what points be defined it followeth that you must remain uncertain whether or no you be not in some fundamental error and so want the substance of Faith without which there can be no hope of Salvation But though we cannot perhaps say in particular thus much and no more is fundamental yet believing all the Bible we are certain enough that we believe all that is fundamental As he that in a receipt takes twenty ingredients whereof ten only are necessary though he know not which those ten are yet taking the whole twenty he is sure enough that he has taken all that are necessary 49. Ad § 29. Obj. It is generally delivered by Catholick Divines that he who erreth against any one revealed truth tâ—seth all Divine Faith Now certainly some Protestants must do so because they hold contradictions which cannot all be true Therefore some of them at least have no divine faith Ans I pass by your weakness in urging Protestants with the authority of your Divines Yet if the Authority of your Divines were even Canonical certainly nothing could be concluded from it in this matter there being not one of them who delivers for true doctrin this position of yours thus nakedly set down That any error against any one revealed truth destroys all divine faith For they all require not your self excepted that this truth must not only be revealed but revealed publickly and all things considered sufficiently propounded to the erring party to be one of those which God under pain of damnation commands all men to believe But if the Reader will be at the pains he may see this vain fancy confuted out of one of the most rational and profound Doctors of your own Church I mean Estius upon the third Book of the Sententes the 23. Distinct and the 13. Section beginning thus It is disputed whether in him who believes some of the Articles of our Faith and disbelieves others or perhaps some one there be faith properly so called in respect of that which he does believe 50. But if Protestants have certainty they want obscurity and so have not that faith which as the Apostle saith is of things not appearing This argument you prosecute in the next Paragraph but I can find nothing in it to convince or perswade me that Protestants cannot have as much certainty as is required to faith of an object not so evident as to beget science If obscurity will not consist with certainty in the highest degree then you are to blame for requiring to faith contradicting conditions If certainty and obscurity will stand together what reason can be imagined that a Protestant may not entertain them both as well as a Papist Your bodies and souls your understandings and wills are I think of the same
condition with ours And why then may not we be certain of an obscure thing as well as you 51. But then besides I am to tell you that you are here every where extreamly if not affectedly mistaken in the Doctrin of Protestants who though they acknowledge that the things which they believe are in themselves as certain as any demonstrable or sensible verities yet pretend not that their certainty of adherence is most perfect and absolute but such as may be perfected and increased as long as they walk by faith and not by sight And consonant hereunto is their doctrin touching the evidence of the objects whereunto they adhere For you abuse the world and them if you pretend that they hold the first of your two principles That these particular Books are the word of God for so I think you mean either to be in it self evidently certain or of it self and being devested of the motives of credibility evidently credible For they are not so fond as to be ignorant nor so vain as to pretend that all men do assent to it which they would if it were evidently certain nor so ridiculous as to imagine that if an Indian that never heard of Christ or Scripture should by chance find a Bible in his own Language and were able to read it that upon the reading it he would certainly without a miracle believe it to be the word of God which he could not chuse if it were evidently credible What then do they affirm of it Certainly no more than this that whatsoever man that is not of a perverse mind shall weigh with serious and mature deliberation those great moments of reason which may incline him to believe the Divine authority of Scripture and compare them with the light objections that in prudence can be made against it he shall not chuse but find sufficient nay abundant inducements to yield unto it firm faith and sincere obedience Let that learned man Hugo Grotius speak for all the rest in his Book of the Truth of Christian Religion which Book whosoever attentively peruses shall find that a man may have great reason to be a Christian without dependence upon your Church for any part of it and that your Religion is no foundation of but rather a scandal and an objection against Christianity He then in the last Chapter of his second Book hath these excellent words If any be not satisfied with these arguments abovesaid but desires more forcible reasons for confirmation of the excellency of Christian Religion let such know that as there are variety of things which be true so are there divers ways of proving or manifesting the truth Thus is there one way in Mathematicks another in Physicks a third in Ethicks and lastly another kind when a matter of fact is in question wherein verily we must rest content with such Testimonies as are free from all suspicion of untruth otherwise down goes all the frame and use of History and a great part of the art of Physick together with all dutifulness that ought to be between parents and children for matters of practice can no way else be known but by such Testimonies Now it is the pleasure of Almighty God that those things which he would have us to believe so that the very belief thereof may be imputed to us for obedience should not so evidently appear as those things which are apprehended by sense and plain demonstration but only be so far forth revealed as may beget faith and a perswasion thereof in the hearts and minds of such as are not obstinate That so the Gospel may be as a touchstone for tryal of mens judgments whether they be sound or unsound For seeing these arguments whereof we have spoken have induced so many honest godly and wise men to approve of this Religion it is thereby plain enough that the fault of other mens infidelity is not for want of sufficient testimony but because they would not have that to be had and embraced for truth which is contrary to their wilful desires it being a hard matter for them to relinquish their honours and set at naught other commodities which thing they know they ought to do if they admit of Christs Doctrin and obey what he hath commanded And this is the rather to be noted of them for that many other historical narrations are approved by them to be true which notwithstanding are only manifest by authority and not by any such strong proofs and perswasions or tokens as do declare the history of Christ to be true which are evident partly by the confession of those Jews that are yet alive and partly in those companies and congregations of Christians which are any where to be found whereof doubtless there was some cause Lastly seeing the long duration or continuance of Christian Religion and the large extent thereof can be ascribed to no human power therefore the same must be attributed to miracles or if any deny that it came to pass through a miraculous manner this very getting so great strength and power without a miracle may be thought to surpass any miracle 52. And now you see I hope that Protestants neither do nor need to pretend to any such evidence in the doctrin they believe as cannot well consist both with the essence and the obedience of faith Let us come now to the last nullity which you impute to the faith of Protestants and that it is want of prudence Touching which point as I have already demonstrated that wisdom is not essential to faith but that a man may truly believe truth though upon insufficient motives So I doubt not but I shall make good that if prudence were necessary to faith we have better title to it than you and that if a wiser than Solomon were here he should have better reason to believe the Religion of Protestants than Papists the Bible rather than the Council of Trent But let us hear what you can say 53. Ad § 31. You demand then first of all What wisdom was it to forsake a Church confessedly very ancient and besides which there could be demonstrated no other Visible Church of Christ upon earth I answer Against God and truth there lies no prescription and therefore certainly it might be great wisdom to forsake ancient Errors for more ancient Truths One God is rather to be followed than innumerable worlds of men And therefore it might be great wisdom either for the whole Visible Church nay for all the men in the world having wandred from the way of Truth to return unto it or for a part of it nay for one man to do so although all the world besides were madly resolute to do the contrary It might be great wisdom to forsake the Errors though of the only Visible Church much more the Roman which in conceiving her self the whole Visible Church does somewhat like the Frog in the Fable which thought the Ditch he lived in to be all the World 54. You demand again
What wisdom was it to forsake a Church acknowledged to want nothing necessary to Salvation indued with Succession of Bishops c. usque ad Election or Choice I answer Yet might it be great wisdom to forsake a Church not acknowledged to want nothing necessary to Salvation but accused and convicted of many damnable errors certainly damnable to them who were convicted of them had they still persisted in them after their conviction though perhaps pardonable which is all that is acknowledged to such as ignorantly continued in them A Church vainly arrogating without possibility of proof a perpetual Succession of Bishops holding always the same doctrine and with a ridiculous impudence pretending perpetual possession of all the world whereas the world knows that a little before Luthers arising your Church was confined to a part of a part of it Lastly a Church vainly glorying in the dependence of other Churches upon her which yet she supports no more than those crouching Anticks which seem in great buildings to labour under the weight they bear do indeed support the Fabrick For a corrupted and false Church may give authority to preach the Truth and consequently against her own falshoods and corruptions Besides a false Church may preserve the Scripture true as now the Old Testament is preserved by the Jews either not being arrived to that height of impiety as to attempt the corruption of it or not able to effect it or not perceiving or not regarding the opposition of it to her corruptions And so we might receive from you lawful Ordination and true Scriptures though you were a false Church and receiving the Scriptures from you though not from you alone I hope you cannot hinder us neither need we ask your leave to believe and obey them And this though you be a false Church and receiving the Scriptures from you though not from you alone I hope you cannot hinder us neither need we ask your leave to believe and obey them And this though you be a false Church is enough to make us a true one As for a Succession of men that held with us in all points of Doctrine it is a thing we need not and you have as little as we So that if we acknowledge that your Church before Luther was a true Church it is not for any ends for any dependence that we have upon you but because we conceive that in a charitable construction you may pass for a true Church Such a Church and no better as you do sometimes acknowledge Protestants to be that is a Company of men wherein some ignorant Souls may be saved So that in this ballancing of Religion against Religion and Church against Church it seems you have nothing of weight and moment to put into your Scale nothing but Smoak and Wind vain shadows and phantastical pretences Yet if Protestants on the other side had nothing to put in their Seal but those negative commendations which you are pleased to afford them nothing but no Unity nor means to procure it no farther extent when Luther arose than Luthers Body no Universality of time or place no visibility or being except only in your Church no Succession of Persons or Doctrine no leader but Luther in a quarrel begun upon no ground but passion no Church no Ordination no Scriptures but such as they received from you if all this were true and this were all that could be pleaded for Protestants possibly with an allowance of three grains of partiality your Scale might seem to turn But then if it may appear that part of these objections are falsly made against them the rest vainly that whatsoever of truth is in these imputations is impertinent to this Tryal and whatsoever is pertinent is untrue and besides that plenty of good matter may be alledged for Protestants which is here dissembled then I hope our Cause may be good notwithstanding these pretences 55. I say then that want of Universality of time and place The invisibility or not existence of the professors of Protestant Doctrine before Luther Luthers being alone when he first opposed your Church Our having our Church Ordinations Scriptures personal and yet not Doctrinal Succession from you are vain and impertinent allegations against the truth of our Doctrine and Church That the entire truth of Christ without any mixture of Error should be professed or believed in all places at any time or in any place at all times is not a thing evident in reason neither have we any Revelation for it And therefore in relying so confidently on it you build your House upon the Sand. And what obligation we had either to be so peevish as to take nothing of yours or so foolish as to take all I do not understand For whereas you say that this is to be choosers and therefore Hereticks I tell you that though all Hereticks are choosers yet all choosers are not Hereticks otherwise they also which choose your Religion must be Hereticks As for our wanting Unity and Means of proving it Luthers opposing your Church upon meer passion our following private men rather than the Catholick Church the first and last are meer untruths for we want not Unity nor means to procure it in things necessary Plain places of Scripture and such as need no interpreter are our means to obtain it Neither do we follow any private men but only the Scripture the Word of God as our rule and reason which is also the gift of God given to direct us in all our actions in the use of this rule And then for Luthers opposing your Church upon meer passion it is a thing I will not deny because I know not his Heart and for the same reason you should not have affirmed it Sure I am whether he opposed your Church upon reason or no he had reason enough to oppose it And therefore if he did it upon passion we will follow him only in his action and not in his passion in his opposition not in the manner of it and then I presume you will have no reason to condemn us unless you will say that a good action cannot be done with reason because some Body before us hath done it upon passion You see then how imprudent you have been in the choice of your arguments to prove Protestants unwise in the choice of their Religion 56. It remains now that I should shew that many reasons of moment may be alledged for the justification of Protestants which are dissembled by you and not put into the Balance Know then Sir that when I say the Religion of Protestants is in prudence to be preferred before yours as on the one side I do not understand by your Religion the Doctrine of Bellarmine or Baronius or any other private man amongst you nor the Doctrine of the Sorbon or of the Jesuits or of the Dominicans or of any other particular Company among you but that wherein you all agree or profess to agree the Doctrine of the
Council of Trent so accordingly on the other side by the Religion of Protestants I do not understand the Doctrine of Luther or Calvin or Melancthon nor the Confession of Augusta or Geneva nor the Catechism of Heidelburg nor the Articles of the Church of England no nor the Harmony of Protestant Confessions but that wherein they all agree and which they all subscribe with a greater Harmony as a perfect rule of their Faith and Actions that is The Bible The Bible I say The Bible only is the Religion of Protestants Whatsoever else they believe besides it and the plain irrefragable indubitable consequences of it well may they hold it as a matter of Opinion but as matter of Faith and Religion neither can they with coherence to their own grounds believe it themselves nor require the belief of it of others without most high and most Schismatical presumption I for my part after a long and as I verily believe and hope impartial search of the true way to Eternal Happiness do profess plainly that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my Foot but upon this Rock only I see plainly and with mine own eyes that there are Popes against Popes Councils against Councils some Fathers against others the same Fathers against themselves a Consent of Fathers of one Age against a Consent of Fathers of another Age the Church of one Age against the Church of another Age. Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended but there are few or none to be found No Tradition but only of Scripture can derive it self from the Fountain but may be plainly proved either to have been brought in in such an Age after Christ or that in such an Age it was not in In a word there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build upon This therefore and this only I have reason to believe This I will profess according to this I will live and for this if there be occasion I will not only willingly but even gladly lose my life though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me Propose me any thing out of this Book and require whether I believe it or no and seem it never so incomprehensible to humane reason I will subscribe it with Hand and Heart as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this God hath said so therefore it is true In other things I will take no mans liberty of judgment from him neither shall any man take mine from me I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me And what measure I mete to others I expect from them again I am fully assured that God does not and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this To believe the Scripture to be Gods word to endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it 57. This is the Religion which I have chosen after a long deliberation and I am verily persuaded that I have chosen wisely much more wisely than if I had guided my self according to your Churches authority For the Scripture being all true I am secured by believing nothing else that I shall believe no falshood as matter of Faith And if I mistake the sense of Scripture and so fall into Error yet am I secure from any danger thereby if but your grounds be true because endeavouring to find the true sense of Scripture I cannot but hold my Error without pertinacy and be ready to forsake it when a more true and a more probable sense shall appear unto me And then all necessary truth being as I have proved plainly set down in Scripture I am certain by believing Scripture to believe all necessary Truth And he that does so if his life be answerable to his Faith how is it possible he should fail of Salvation 58. Besides whatsoever may be pretended to gain to your Church the credit of a Guide all that and much more may be said for the Scripture Hath your Church been Ancient The Scripture is more Ancient Is your Church a means to keep men at Unity So is the Scripture to keep those that believe it and will obey it in Unity of belief in matters necessary or very profitable and in Unity of Charity in points unnecessary Is your Church Universal for time or place Certainly the Scripture is more Universal For all the Christians in the World those I mean that in truth deserve this name do now and always have believed the Scripture to be the Word of God whereas only you say that you only are the Church of God and all Christians besides you deny it 59. Thirdly following the Scripture I follow that whereby you prove your Churches infallibility whereof were it not for Scripture what pretence could you have or what notion could we have and by so doing tacitely confess that your selves are surer of the Truth of the Scripture than of your Churches authority For we must be surer of the proof than of the thing proved otherwise it is no proof 60. Fourthly following the Scripture I follow that which must be true if your Church be true for your Church gives attestation to it Whereas if I follow your Church I must follow that which though Scripture be true may be false nay which if Scripture be true must be false because the Scripture testifies against it 61. Fifthly to follow the Scripture I have Gods express warrant and command and no colour of any prohibition But to believe your Church infallible I have no command at all much less an express command Nay I have reason to fear that I am prohibited to do so in these Words call no man Master on Earth They fell by infidelity Thou standest by Faith Be not high minded but fear The Spirit of truth The World cannot receive 62. Following your Church I must hold many things not only above reason but against it if any thing be against it whereas following the Scripture I shall believe many mysteries but no impossibilities many things above reason but nothing against it many things which had they not been revealed reason could never have discovered but nothing which by true reason may be confuted many things which reason cannot comprehend how they can be but nothing which reason can comprehend that it cannot be Nay I shall believe nothing which reason will not convince that I ought to believe it For reason will convince any man unless he be of a perverse mind that the Scripture is the Word of God And then no reason can be greater than this God says so therefore it is true 63. Following your Church I must hold many things which to any mans judgment that will give himself the liberty of judgment will seem much more plainly contradicted by Scripture than the infallibility of your Church appears to be confirmed by it and consequently must be so
be made unnecessary by being so accounted nor an unnecessary point be made necessary by being overvalued But as the ancient Philosophers whose different opinions about the soul of man you may read in Aristotle de Anima and Cicero's Tusculan Questions notwithstanding their divers opinions touching the nature of the soul yet all of them had souls and souls of the same nature Or as those Physicians who dispute whether the brain or heart be the principal part of a man yet all of them have brains and have hearts and herein agree sufficiently So likewise though some Protestants esteem that Doctrin the soul of the Church which others do not so highly value yet this hinders not but that which is indeed the soul of the Church may be in both sorts of them and though one account that a necessary truth which others account neither necessary nor perhaps true yet this notwithstanding in those Truths which are truly and really necessary they may all agree For no Argument can be more sophistical than this They differ in some points which they esteem necessary Therefore they differ in some that indeed and in truth are so 35. Now as concerning the other inference That they cannot agree what points are fundamental I have said and proved formerly that there is no such necessity as you imagin or pretend that men should certainly know what is and what is not fundamental They that believe all things plainly delivered in Scripture believe all things fundamental and are at sufficient Unity in matters of Faith though they cannot precisely and exactly distinguish between what is fundamental and what is profitable nay though by error they mistake some vain or perhaps hurtful opinions for necessary and fundamental Truths Cap. 3. §. 53. alibt Besides I have shewed above that as Protestants do not agree for you over-reach in saying they cannot touching what points are fundamental so neither do you agree what points are defined and so to be accounted and what are not nay nor concerning the subject in which God hath placed this pretended Authority of defining some of you setling it in the Pope himself though alone without a Council Others in a Council though divided from the Pope Others only in the conjunction of Council and Pope Others not in this neither but in the acceptation of the present Church Universal Lastly others not attributing it to this neither but only to the perpetual Succession of the Church of all Ages of which divided Company it is very evident and undeniable that every former may be and are obliged to hold many things defined and therefore necessary which the latter according to their own grounds have no obligation to do nay cannot do so upon any firm and sure and infallible foundation FINIS OUT OF Mr. Chillingworth's Manuscript A LETTER TO Mr. LEWGAR CONCERNING THE Church of Romes Being the Guide of Faith and Judge of Controversies Good Mr. LEWGAR THough I am resolved not to be much afflicted for the loss of that which is not in my power to keep yet I cannot deny but the loss of a friend goes very near unto my heart and by this name of a friend I did presume till of late that I might have called you because though perhaps for want of power and opportunity I have done you no good office yet I have been always willing and ready to do you the best service I could and therefore I cannot but admire at that affected strangeness which in your last Letter to me you seem to take upon you renouncing in a manner all relation to me and tacitly excommunicating me from all interest in you the Superscription of your Letter is to Mr. William Chillingworth and your Subscription John Lewgar as if you either disdained or made a conscience of stiling me your friend or your self mine If this proceed from passion and weakness I pray mend it if from reason I pray shew it If you think me one of those to whom Saint John forbids you to say God save you then you are to think and prove me one of those Deceivers which deny Christ Jesus to be come in the flesh If you think me an Heretick and therefore to be avoided you must prove me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 condemned by my own judgment which I know I cannot and therefore I think you cannot If you say I do not hear the Church and therefore am to be esteemed an Heathen or Publican you are to prove that by the Church there is meant the Church of Rome and yet when you have done so I hope Christians are not forbidden to shew humanity and civility even to Pagans for Gods sake Mr. Lewgar free your self from this blind zeal at least for a little space and consider with reason and moderation what strange crime you can charge me with that should deferve this strange usage especially from you Is it a crime to endeavour with all my understanding to find your Religion true and to make my self a believer of it and not be able to do so Is it a crime to imploy all my reason upon the justification of the Infallibility of the Roman Church and to find it impossible to be justified I will call God to witness who knows my heart better than you do that I have evened the scale of my judgment as much as possibly I could and have not willingly allowed any one grain of worldly motives on either side but have weighed the Reasons for your Religion and against with such indifference as if there were nothing in the world but God and my self and is it my fault that that scale goes down which hath the most weight in it that that building falls which has a false foundation have you such power over your understanding that you can believe what you please though you see no reason or that you can suspend your belief when you do see reason If you have I pray for our old friendships sake teach me that trick but until I have learnt it I pray blame me not for going the ordinary way I mean for believing or not believing as I see reason If you can convince me of wilful opposition against the known truth of negligence in seeking it of unwillingness to find it of preferring temporal respects before it or of any other fault which is in my power to amend that is indeed a fault if I amend it not be as angry with me as you please But to impute to me involuntary errors or that I do not see that which I would see but cannot or that I will not profess that which I do not believe certainly this is far more unreasonable error than any which you can justly charge me with for let me tell you the imputing Socinianism to me whosoever was the author of it was a wicked and groundless slander Perhaps you will say for this is the usual song on that side that pride is a voluntary fault and with this I am justly
this is most false and cannot without impudence be pretended as I am ready to justifie to any indifferent Hearer 2. I demand who shall be judge whether the Fathers mean as is pretended If it be said reason will tell me so I say 1. this is false 2. This is again to do that which is objected to Protestants for such a horrid crime that is to build all finally upon reason If it be said they are so interpreted by the Catholick Church I demand whether by the Catholick Church be meant that onely that is in subordination to the Bishop of Rome or any other with that or besides that If any other it is false and impudent to pretend that they so understand the Fathers or Scriptures If that only then this is to say that that Church is infallible because it may be deduced from Scripture that it is so and to prove that it may be deduced from Scripture because the Fathers say so and to prove the Fathers do say and mean so because the Church of Rome says they do so And then what a stir and trouble was here to no purpose why was it not rather said plainly at the beginning The Church of Rome is certainly infallible because she her self says so and she must say true because she is infallible and that is as much to say as unless you grant me the Question I neither can nor will dispute with you If it is said indeed the Fathers do not draw this doctrin from Scripture but yet they affirm it with a full consent as a matter of Tradition I reply 1. That this pretence also is false and that upon tryal it will not appear to have any colour of probability to any who remembers that it is the present Roman Church and not the Catholick Church whose infallibility is here disputed 2. I demand who shall be judge whether the Fathers do indeed affirm this or no If reason then again we are fallen upon that dangerous Rock that all must be resolved into private reason If the Church I ask again what Church is meant If the Church of the Grecians or Abyssines or Protestants or any other but the Roman it is evident they deny it If the Church of Rome then we are again very near the head of the Circle For I ask how shall I be assured this Church will not err and deceive me in interpreting the Fathers and the Answer must be either none or this that the Church is infallible Obj. If it be said that the Infallibility of the Roman Church would yield the Church so many commodities and that the want of an infallible Church to guide men in the way to Heaven would bring so many mischiefs upon the world that it cannot be thought but that God out of his love to men hath appointed this Church as an infallible guide to all other Churches seeing it is so necessary there should be some such guide and so evident there is no other Ans I answer that this argument would serve the Church of Greece or England or Geneva to prove it self infallible and the guide of all other Churches would they but take upon them to be so For every one might say for it self It is necessary there should be some Guide it is evident there is no other Ergo I am appointed by God to be that Guide The same argument any man might use to make himself Monarch of any popular State for first he might represent unto them the commodities of a Monarchy and the mischiefs of a Democracy then he might say That God surely out of his Love to them hath appointed some remedy for their inconveniences And lastly that he hath ordained no other to redress them but himself and then conclude that he alone must of necessity be the man appointed to rule over them I answer Secondly that here also we must resolve all into Reason and the private Spirit or that we are still in the Circle For I demand how do you know that these pretended commodities are to be compassed and these pretended mischiefs are to be avoided only by the Infallibility of the Church of Rome or some other Church and not by any other means which God hath provided If you say reason tells you so I say 1. This is to make reason your last and lowest foundation 2. I assure you Reason tells me no such matter and yet I know that I am as willing to hear it as you are If you say the Church tells you so and she is infallible this I say is to prove the Church infallible because she is so Thirdly I demand How it is possible you should know that these pretended commodities might not be gained and these mischiefs which you fear avoided without any assistance of the Church of Rome's infallibility if all men in the world did believe the Scripture and live according to it and would require no more of others but to do so If you say that notwithstanding this there would be no unity in Doctrin I answer 1. It is impossible you should know this considering that there are many places in Scripture which do more than problably import that the want of piety in living is the cause of want of unity in believing 2. That there would be unity of Opinion in all things necessary and that in things not necessary unity of Opinion is not necessary But lastly that notwithstanding differences in these things of lesser importance there might and would be unity of Communion unity of charity and affection which is one of the greatest blessings which the world is capable of absolute unity of opinion being a matter rather to be desired than hoped for Obj. Against this it has been objected that the Scripture cannot be the guide because many men have used their best endeavors to follow it and yet have fallen some into Arianism others into Pelagianism others into other damnable Heresies and how can I secure any man but he may do the like Ans To this I answer by distinguishing the persons which are pretended to have made use of this Guide and yet to have fallen into Heresie that they were either such as did love the truth sincerely and above all things as did seek it diligently and with all their power to this intent that they might conform their belief and life unto it such as following S. Pauls direction did first try all things deliberately and then chose what in their conscience they thought was best or they were such as for want of the love of the truth God suffered to fall into strong delusions to fall to a false Religion because they brought not forth the fruits of the true to make shipwreck of their faith because they had cast away a good conscience to have their Eyes blinded and their light taken away because they made not the right use of it but were idle and unprofitable and set their hearts upon vanity and had only a form of Religion but denied the
scandalizing many holy persons or provoking those that are turbulent I dare not freely disallow Nay the Catholick Church it self did see and dissemble and tolerate them for these are the things of which he presently says after the Church of God and you will have him speak of the true Catholick Church placed between Chaffe and Tares tolerates many things Which was directly against the command of the Holy Spirit given the Church by S. Paul To stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made her free and not to suffer her self to be brought in bondage to these survile burdens Our Saviour tells the Scribes and Pharisees that in vain they Worshiped God teaching for Doctrines mens Commandments For that laying aside the Commandments of God they held the Traditions of men as the washing of Pots and Cups and many other such like things Certainly that which S. Austin complains of as the general fault of Christians of his time was parallel to this Multa saith he quae in divinis libris saluberrima praecepta sunt minus curantur This I suppose I may very well render in our Saviours Words The commandments of God are laid aside and then tam multis presumptionibus sic plena sunt omnia all things or all places are so full of so many presumptions and those exacted with such severity nay with Tyranny that he was more severely censured who in the time of his Octaves touched the Earth with his naked Feet than he which drowned and buried his Soul in Drink Certainly if this be not to teach for Doctrines mens Commandments I know not what is And therefore these superstitious Christians might be said to Worship God in vain as well as Scribes and Pharisees And yet great variety of superstitions of this kind were then already spread over the Church being different in divers place This is plain from these Words of S. Austin of them diversorum locorum diversis moribus innumerabiliter variantur and apparent because the stream of them was grown so violent that he durst not oppose it liberiùs improbare non audeo I dare not freely speak against them So that to say the Catholick Church tolerated all this and for fear of offence durst not abrogate or condemn it is to say if we Judge rightly of it that the Church with silence and connivence generally tolerated Christians to worship God in vain Now how this tolerating of Universal superstition in the Church can consist with the assistance and direction of Gods omnipotent spirit to guard it from superstition and with the accomplishment of that pretended Prophesie of the Church I have set Watchmen upon thy Walls O Jerusalem which shall never hold their peace Day nor Night besides how these superstitions being thus nourished cherished and strengthned by the practice of the most and urged with great violence upon others as the commandments of God and but fearfully opposed or contradicted by any might in time take such deep Root and spread their Branches so far as to pass for Universal Customs of the Church he that does not see sees nothing Especially considering the catching and contagious nature of this sin and how fast ill Weeds spread and how true and experimented that rule is of the Historian Exempla non confistunt ubi incipiunt sed quamlibet in tenuem recepta tramitem latissimè evagandi sibi faciunt potestatem Examples do not stay where they begin but tho at first pent up in a narrow Tract they make themselves room for extravagant wandrings Nay that some such superstition had not already even in S. Austins time prevailed so far as to be Consuetudine universae Ecclesiae roboratum confirmed by the Custom of the Universal Church who can doubt that considers that the practice of Commiunicating Infants had even then got the credit and authority not only of an Universal Custom but also of an Apostolick Tradition 49. But now after all this ado what if S. Austin says not this which is pretended of the Church viz. That she neither approves nor dissembles nor practises any thing against Faith or good Life but only of good men in the Church Certainly though some Copies read as you would have it yet you should not have dissembled that others read the place otherwise vix Ecclesia multa tolerat tamen quae sunt contra Fidem bonam vitam nec bonus approbat c. The Church tolerates many things and yet what is against Faith or good Life a good man will neither approve nor dissemble nor practise 50. Ad § 17. That Abraham begat Isaacc is a point very far from being Fundamental and yet I hope you will grant that Protestants believing Scripture to be the Word of God may be certain enough of the truth and certainty of it For what if they say that the Catholick Church and much more themselves may possibly Err in some unfundamental points it is therefore consequent they can be certain of none such What if a wiser man than I may mistake the sense of some obscure place of Aristotle may I not therefore without any arrogance or inconsequence conceive my self certain that I understand him in some plain places which carry their sense before them And then for points Fundamental to what purpose do you say That we must first know what they be before we can be assured that we cannot Err in understanding the Scripture when we pretend not at all to any assurance that we cannot Err but only to a sufficient certainty that we do not Err but rightly understand those things that are plain whether Fundamental or not Fundamental That God is and is a rewarder of them that seek him That there is no Salvation but by Faith in Christ That by repentance and Faith in Christ Remission of sins may be obtained That there shall be a Resurrection of the Body These we conceive both true because the Scripture says so and Truths Fundamental because they are necessary parts of the Gospel whereof our Saviour saies Qui non crediderit damnabitur All which we either learn from Scripture immediately or learn of those that learn it of Scripture so that neither Learned nor Unlearned pretend to know these things independently of Scripture And therefore in imputing this to us you cannot excuse your self from having done us a palpable injury 52. Ad § 19. To that which is here urged of the differences amongst Protestants concerning many points I answer that those differences between Protestants concerning Errors damnable and not damnable Truths Fundamental and not Fundamental may be easily reconciled For either the Error they speak of may be purely and simply involuntary or it may be in respect of the cause of it voluntary If the cause of it be some voluntary and avoidable fault the Error is it self sinful and consequently in its own nature damnable As if by negligence in seeking the Truth by unwillingness to find it by Pride by obstinacy by desiring that Religion should
be true which sutes best with my ends by fear of mens ill opinion or any other worldly fear or any other worldly hope I betray my self to any Error contrary to any Divine revealed Truth that Error may be justly stiled a sin and consequently of it self to such a one damnable But if I be guilty of none of these faults but be desirous to know the Truth and diligent in seeking it and advise not at all with Flesh and Blood about the choice of my opions but only with God and that Reason that he hath given me if I be thus qualified and yet through human infirmity fall into Error that Error cannot be damnable Again the party erring may be conceived either to die with contrition for all his sins known and unknown or without it If he die without it this Error in it self damnable will be likewise so unto him If he die with contrition as his Error can be no impediment but he may his Error though in it self damnable to him according to your Doctrine will not prove so And therefore some of those Authors whom you quote speaking of Errors whereunto men were betrayed or wherein they were kept by their Fault or Vice or Passion as for the most part men are Others speaking of them as Errors simply and purely involuntary and the effects of human infirmity some as they were retracted by Contrition to use your own phrase others as they were not no marvel though they have past upon them some a heavier and some a milder some an absolving and some a condemning sentence The least of all these Errors which here you mention having malice enough too frequently mixed with it to sink a man deep enough into Hell and the greatest of them all being according to your Principles either no fault at all or very Venial where there is no malice of the will conjoyned with it And if it be yet as the most malignant poyson will not poyson him that receives with it a more powerful Antidote so I am confident your own Doctrine will force you to confess that whosoever dies with Faith in Christ and Contrition for all sins known and unknown in which heap all his sinful Errors must be comprized can no more be hurt by any the most malignant and pestilent Error than S. Paul by the Viper which he shook off into the fire Now touching the necessity of Repentance from Dead works and Faith in Christ Jesus the Son of God and Saviour of the World they all agree and therefore you cannot deny but they agree about all that is simply necessary Moreover though if they should go about to choose out of Scripture all these Propositions and Doctrines which integrate and make up the Body of Christian Religion peradventure there would not be so exact agreement amongst them as some say there was between the 70. Interpreters in Translating the Old Testament yet thus far without Controversie they do all agree that in the Bible all these things are contained and therefore that whosoever does truly and sincerely believe the Scripture must of necessity either in Hypothesi or at least in thesi either formally or at least virtually either explicitely or at least implicitely either in Act or at least in preparation of mind believe all things Fundamental It being not Fundamental nor required of Almighty God to believe the true sense of Scripture in all places but only that we should endeavour to do so and be prepared in mind to do so whensoever it shall be sufficiently propounded to us Suppose a man in some disease were prescribed a Medicine consisting of twenty ingredients and he advising with Physitians should find them differing in Opinion about it some of them telling him that all the ingredients were absolutely necessary some that only some of them were necessary the rest only profitable and requisite ad melius esse lastly some that some only were necessary some profitable and the rest superfluous yet not hurtful Yet all with one accord agreeing in this That the whole receipt had in it all things necessary for the recovery of his health and that if he made use of it he should infallibly find it successful what wise man would not think they agreed sufficiently for his direction to the recovery of his health Just so these Protestant Doctors with whose discords you make such Tragedies agreeing in Thesi thus far that the Scripture evidently contains all things necessary to Salvation both for matter of Faith and of practice and that whosoever believes it and endeavours to find the true sense of it and to conform his Life unto it shall certainly perform all things necessary to Salvation and undoubtedly be saved agreeing I say thus far what matters it for the direction of men to Salvation though they differ in opinion touching what points are absolutely necessary and what not What Errors absolutely repugnant to Salvation and what not Especially considering that although they differ about the Question of the necessity of these Truths yet for the most part they agree in this that Truths they are and profitable at least though not simply necessary And though they differ in the Question whether the contrary Errors be destructive of Salvation or no yet in this they consent that Errors they are and hurtful to Religion though not destructive of Salvation Now that which God requires of us is this That we should believe the Doctrines of the Gospel to be Truths not all necessary Truths for all are not so and consequently the repugnant Errors to be falshoods yet not all such falshoods as unavoidably draw with them damnation upon all that hold them for all do not so 53. Yea but you say it is very requisite we should agree upon a particular Catalogue of Fundamental points for without such a Catalogue no man can be assured whether or no he hath Faith sufficient to Salvation This I utterly deny as a thing evidently false and I wonder you should content your self magisterially to say so without offering any proof of it I might much more justly think it enough barely to deny it without refutation but I will not Thus therefore I argue against it Without being able to make a Catalogue of Fundamentals I may be assured of the Truth of this Assertion if it be true That the Scripture contains all necessary points of Faith and know that I believe explicitely all that is exprest in Scripture and implicitely all that is contained in them Now he that believes all this must of necessity believe all things necessary Therefore without being able to make a Catalogue of Fundamentals I may be assured that I believe all things necessary and consequently that my Faith is sufficient I said of the truth of this Assertion if it be true Because I will not here enter into the Question of the truth of it it being sufficient for my present purpose that it may be true and may be believed without any dependence upon a