could not be a certain character of the Infallibility of that Council But why do we use Arguments in a matter in which experience has sufficiently instructed us The Fifth Council assembled at Constantinople on occasion of three Books published the one of Ibas Bishop of Edessa the other of Theodorus of Mopsuesta and the other of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus was it not held in spight of all the oppositions of Pope Vigilius did not that Council condemn those Writings as Heretical against the express prohibitions that Vigilius had made by a publick Decree to Condemn them and yet notwithstanding was not that very Council in the end approved by the Successours of Vigilius and in fine received throughout all the Church for a True and Holy Oecumenical Council Those Approbations therefore are only a juggle which wholly depend on the capricious humours of the Popes on their different Interests on their good or ill humours One Pope disapproves of a Council and makes it void to advance all that he does by that the Council is remote enough from Infallibility and ought not to be held for Infallible another Pope comes and receives and approves of it and behold on a sudden that Council changes its condition and becomes Infallible Besides that did not Pope Liberius approve an Arian Council held at Sirmium in subscribing an Heretical Confession that had been drawn up and which Saint Hilary calls the Arian perfidiousness the Heresie sprung from Sirmium for which he pronounced an Anathema against Liberius For what else was that Subscription in Consequence of which Liberius embraced the Communion of the Arians but a Ratification and real Approbation of the Act of an Erroneous Council and it signifies nothing to say That Liberius was in Exile when he committed that Error for without alledging here what he himself declared to the Eastern Arian Bishops That he was in Peace and Unanimity with them and all their Provinces in good earnest and that he had received that Catholick Faith with all his heart that he had never in the least contradicted it that he had readily given his consent that he followed and held it his Exile and Concern to get away from them does not hinder but that it should be true That he did approve an Infidel Confession nor by Consequence letting us see that it might very well happen That the Popes did Authorize the Acts of wicked Councils and that it ought not to be pretended that their Approbation makes Councils Infallible nor that it has any certain ground for declaring them to be such 6. That Example of Liberius encounters also all those who ascribe that Infallibility to the Popes for behold one in whom by the Testimony of St. Hilary and St. Jerom that Priviledge had no effect But as that Opinion is not generally received in this Kingdom and we need not to fear objections from any here so it is needless to refute them I shall only say that that Dispute that is in the Church of Rome about those to whom this Infallibility belongs whether to the Pope only or a Council only or to a Council approved by the Pope or to the Pope as the Head of the Council lets us see that that pretence in general has no ground for if in truth the Latine Church had that Priviledge it would never be so uncertain as they have made it but it would have been known a little more clearly where it resided However it be it plainly appears that the Latine Church does not pretend to it as a Law of Nature for she is composed of no different blood from the rest of men nor as a right joyned to the profession of Christianity nor as a meer quality of a Church for in that case the Greek and other Churches would have the same advantage but that she pretends to it as a peculiar priviledge whereby they were distinguished from other Churches as the Greek and Armenian c. It appears that they would not set this Prerogative before us as a first Principle which is evident of it self without needing any proof for in fine it is not so clear that the Latin Church should be Infallible as it is that one and one make two and that the whole is greater than any of its parts It is then certainly but very reasonable to demand that they would give us the proofs and grounds of so important a right I mean other proofs than those that are commonly taken from the same Authority of that Church For it will not be enough to confirm that Infallibility for her only to say I am so every Church may say the same and yet not be believed They ought to produce proofs and proofs that come from Heaven since there is none besides God that can confer so great a Right and they ought to shew them to us to the end we may judge of them and weigh their Cogency and Truth That being so I affirm that our Fathers were bound to use all sorts of Rational methods to examine that Question whether the Church of Rome was Infallible or no And to look to both sides to settle themselves in a good Judgment This is that which in my opinion none will contest But from thence these things will clearly follow 1. That our Fathers had right to examine one of the Tenets of the Latin Church which is that of her Infallibility 2. That they had right to judge of it according to the Nature of those proofs which presented themselves for or against it 3. That they might lawfully reject it as false if in their examination of it it appeared to be false 4. That it is neither absurd nor rash to maintain that every one has right to examine a Tenet of the Church and to judge of it 5. That all those General Objections which they have hitherto made against that Truth are false and frivolous such as these that if one give All that Liberty of examining every one may make a Religion of his own That there is no other way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith That he who examines makes himself a Judg above the Church That it is the ready way to bring in a private Spirit and other such like things all which are refuted by that one Example in the Point of Infallibility 6. That if it is no ways absurd that every one should have right to examine a Tenet of the Church that cannot be proved otherwise than by the Scriptures it is not also absurd to say that that right of searching out the true sence of Scripture belongs to every Christian 7. That it is not absurd to say that a Believer is Master of his own Faith by depending only upon God and independant on men 8. That if every Christian has right to examine one of the chief Articles of Religion it is no ways inconvenient to say that he has right to examine all for there is not less danger nor less
Prejudices is Will they say to defend themselves that their is a very great difference between the Jewish Visible Church and the Christian that this has its Rights Priviledges and Promises which the other had not For she has a Soveraign Authority over the Faith of her Children a priviledge that she can never err and promises of a perpetual visibility But to come to that they ought first to renounce all those general proofs upon which they found that Absolute Obedience to the Latin Church They need say no more as the Author of the Prejudices has done that the darkness of our minds our personal Prejudices the uncertainty wherein we are of being deceived in our Judgments the being overwhelmed with a thousand cares and a thousand Temporal necessities which almost wholly take us up and which will not allow us to give more then a very little Time to the Examining the Truths of Religion the want of necessary helps the ignorance narrow and limited understandings of the greatest part of mankind constrain us to refer our selves to the Church All that would be to no purpose if they restrain it to a priviledge of the Christian Church For these very same general reasons had place in the time of the Jewish Church men saw not then more clearly then they do in these days they were not more assured in their Judgments they were not less cumbred with worldly affairs they were not less unprovided of necessary helps for the Examination of the Truths of Religion they were not then less ignorant and their minds less narrow then men are now in these days and yet notwithstanding all that did not make it their duty blindly to follow their Pastors or Ordinary Guides These are then nothing but shadows and frivolous pretences which having been of no force then cannot have any weight now We need not further say as the Author of Prejudices has done That it is certain that God can save men and even the most ignorant and simple That yet he does not offer them any other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That it is therefore necessary that that should be not only possible but easy to be known that yet notwithstanding it is clear that there is no way more difficult more dangerous and less fitted to all capacities then that of examining all its Tenets One may equally apply all those propositions to the Times of the Old Testament as well as to those of the New God could save men there He made no other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That ought then to have been easily known and that way of Examination was not less dangerous nor more fitted to all sorts of capacities then it is now Notwithstanding all that had not any force to hinder the Faithful from Examining it They cannot then in these days draw any consequence from what they so propose I affirm the same thing of all those other inconveniences which they invent to take away from every one that right of Examining the State of Religion by the Scripture and not wholly to believe their Pastors as that it would be to introduce a Principle of Schism and Division that every one might make himself a Judge of the Church that every one might make a Religion according to his Fancy that it is a great rashness for private Persons to imagine that they have more Understanding and more Wisdom than the whole Church and other such like things They may see that all those arguings are brought in vainly and to no purpose for if they were good and solid being so general as they are they would serve for all Times and all Places and would have their Force in favour of the Jewish Church as well as they would have them conclude in Favour of the Latin In the second place those Rights Priviledges and Promises which they would ascribe to the Christian Visible Church in exclusion of the Jewish are evidently null if they would make them depend precisely on Christianity For as I have before noted the Greek Church the Armenian the Nestorian and Aethiopian might pretend to them as justly as the Latin and yet the Latin applies them to her self in particular to the prejudice of all the others They ought then either to shew us what reason she has to appropriate those Rights Priviledges and general Promises and to make that that regards the Body of the Universal Church become particular to her or it is necessary they shew us that indeed they are not those Rights Priviledges and Promises that are common to all Christian Societies and that they are peculiar to the Latin Church But they know not how to do either the one or the other For neither Nature nor Grace have given any of those Priviledges or Rights to the Latins in exclusion from all other Christians They are neither more Lords of our Consciences nor more Infallible than others Christianity is Uniform throughout The Scripture also does not contain any one particular promise for them On the contrary Saint Paul says That in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Scythian nor Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all So that the Latin Church has no reason to draw that to her self which is a common Right nor to pretend any peculiar Priviledges But in the summ of all we have made it appear in the foregoing Chapters that those pretended Priviledges of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Christian Church Visible and those promises of perpetual Visibility in that Sence of Visibility wherein they understand it are Chimaeras which have not any Foundation either in Scripture or Reason And as to that right of Soveraign-Authority it cannot here be alledged but to very ill purpose For it is that which is yet in Dispute and whereof we have shewn the falsity from the example of the Jewish Church But they may draw from that example a consequence against the Latin one because that if that pretence would have been heretofore pernicious and destructive to Religion and the true Church as they may see it would have been it follows that it will be so yet in these days If then they cannot set before us any other difference between those two Terms and those two Churches which hinders my Conclusion the Argument will hold intire for it will not be enough to overthrow it meerly to say that the Christian Church has that Authority and that the Jewish had it not but they ought to give us a reason for it 3. But to proceed with our Reflexions If that Maxim whereof we treat were true that is to say if men were bound to give to their ordinary Pastors a blind obedience in the matters of Religion to see with their Eyes to tread in their Steps and to devest themselves of their own conduct to rest upon theirs the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ and his Doctrine during the time of his Preaching
one might make a large Volum of them if these Antient Disorders were not so publickly known One has publisht not long since a Book of the Rates of the Apostolick Chamber and the Taxes enjoyned for Penances which alone declares more then it will be necessary for us to stay upon for our Edification There not only every dispatch of business but every sin also every crime has its set Price and as there is nothing to be done without Money so there is nothing which Money cannot do 19. I could add to all that I have said a multitude of other things that could not but have been very proper to have raised those prejudices in the minds of our Fathers whereof we have spoken For those unjust ways which Rome has made use of to draw all affairs to it self with all the Riches of the West all the underhand Canvassings and strange Practices it has used in the Elections of Popes the Scandalous Schisms that have sprung from the Divisions of Parties and Differences of Elections The Bloody Wars that the Popes are accused to have divers times kindled among Christian Princes the Intrigues the dishonest ways whereby they are said to have served themselves to engage the Kings and Grandees of the World in their Interests the endeavours they have always used to elude the demands of a Reformation all these things sufficiently discover more of the Spirit of the World then of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and will easily perswade all those who are not wholly deprived of their Reason that there must needs have been latent at the bottom an extream Coruption But we ought to make an end of this Chapter and to leave a matter so ungrateful into which we had not at all entred if we had not been obliged by the necessity of a just defence as I have before declared It only remains that we shut up in the Close of all those things which we have represented by concluding that they cannot at least without renouncing all equity any more condemn our Fathers either of rashness or presumption if they durst perswade themselves that the Church and Religion were fallen into the very worst hands and if they judged from thence that they ought to enter upon a more particular scrutiny of those Doctrines that they taught and of those Laws whereby they would bind their Consciences That Consequence which they drew from thence was but the just effect of a Reason animated by the fear of God and a desire which they had of their own Salvation for what colour or pretence could there be that a Disorder in the Government of the Church so great so antient so general should not be accompanied with a multitude of other Errors contrary to the word of God and prejudicial to the Salvation of men CHAP. III. That the External State of that Religion it self had in the times of our Fathers signs of its Corruption sufficient to afford them just motives to Examine it ALthough these Reflections that I have already set down drawn from the Government of the Church were very weighty and by themselves capable of making the most just impressions on the Minds and Consciences of those who would set themselves to work out their own Salvation according to the Exhortation of the Apostle with fear and trembling yet we ought not to imagine that our Fathers were determined by those considerations alone They yet made others which they had that we may yet be more sensibly touched by them since they had for their object not the outward Form or State of the Ministry nor the persons who possessed the Offices and Dignities of the Church but their Religion it self in that State in which it was in their days For it is most true that it was scarce possible for those who did the least in the World fix their Eyes on that Religion to consider its Draught and its External Form without discovering or at least without discerning infinite Characters of its Corruption And this is that which I design to treat of in this Chapter 1. One of the chief Objects that presented it self to our Fathers was that of the great Number of Ceremonies with which they beheld that Religion either shrowded or overwhelmed It matters little which of the two we affirm for which way soever we take it it was always a true Pourtrait of the old Oeconomy of Moses which seem'd to be reviv'd in the World They took special notice of their external sacrifices their solemn Feasts distinction of Meats of their Altars of their Tapers of their sacred Vessels of their Censings of their set Fasts throughout the Year of their mystical Figures and a multitude of particular things altogether resembling those that were enjoin'd under the Law and in general a great Conformity to that Antient-Worship consisting in such a Love and Excessive usage of Ceremonies This was without doubt a Character very opposite to that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ where the Spirit Rules and not the Letter and which is made free from all that great cumbrance of External Observations St. Paul calls these Observances weak and beggerly Elements a Yoak of bondage the rudiments of the World the shadow of things to come whereof the body is Jesus Christ and St. Peter a Yoak which neither the Jews in his days nor their Fathers were able to bear Jesus Christ himself told the woman of Samaria That the time was come when the true worshippers of his Father should worship him in Spirit and in truth What likelyhood was there that they would have spoke after that manner if the Church of Christ her self should be burthened with as many or more Ceremonies then the Synagogue And if as Tertulian speaks God had not removed the difficulties of the Law to substitute in their places the easy Rules of the Gospel They would have Preached to us the Spirit and Liberty only to have us subjected again to the Letter and to have placed us under a servitude far more insupportable then the Former 2. Moreover as our Fathers saw one part of those Ceremonies taken from the Jews so they preceiv'd a multitude of others that were drawn from or imitated the Heathens by their approving of the same which they either Authorised or practised For we might put into this rank the use of holy water or water Consecrated for sprinkling in the entrance into Churches as well as private Houses and the Funerals of the dead the blessings and the sprinklings the using of Spittle in the Baptism of little Children the Invocation of Saints their Canonization their Patronages and ordering of their Charges and Imployments Their Images and Pictures their Agnus Dei's their Feasts for all the Saints for the deaths of St. John and many others their usage of Processions of Rogations their visiting the Shrines or Reliques of Saints of setting up the sign of the Cross where four ways met of Anniversaries for the dead of swearing by their Reliques and
I know not how many others that were evidently either the Remnants or Imitations of Antient Paganism Who would think it strange that an Idea of a Religion that plainly appear'd to be so little advantagious to it or to say better which was so contrary to the Spirit and the true design of Christianity should have touched our Fathers and inspir'd into them a desire of knowing those things a little more particularly then they had as yet done 3. They were yet further carri'd out with that desire when they considered the ill Effects that those Ceremonies borrow'd from the Pagans had produc'd and some others that were annexed to them as Rosaries Chaplets holy Salt their Pilgrimages and and Monastick Vows and such like things For they manifestly fill'd the minds of men with superstition they caused a thousand abuses among the people they ordinarily made way for lying Forgeries and which rendred them yet far more odious they fomented a too natural negligence which every one has for works of true and solid Piety whether by busying the minds of Christians too much or perswading them that they had very well acquitted themselves of their duty by doing these External things or lastly whether it was by infusing into them a false Idea of Divinity as if all its worship did consist in such Trumpery Who is it that sees not what a great prejudice this was against a Religion that taught such things and so solemnly enjoyned them to be practised 4. It had been yet very hard if our Fathers had not been offended by that worldly Pomp wherewith they saw Religion so excessively cloathed For they very well knew that true Christianity was contented to gain the Hearts and Souls of men by the Majesty of its Doctrines and Holiness of its Precepts And that for the rest it professed to retain its simplicity notwithstanding which they observed a clean contrary Character in the Magnificence of their Tenples in the Gold of their Tabernacles in the Pride of their Sacrifices in the Riches of their Ornaments and in general in all that external splendour which seem'd destin'd only to strike extraordinarily the sences and by this means to raise an ill grounded Admiration that which is proper to only corrupt Religions which as Tertullian takes notice labour to gain their Authority and to obtain the belief of the People by their Pomp and their profuseness 5. The Natural Effect of the Doctrines of Christianity when they are receiv'd with Faith and when its worship is practised with Devotion is to comfort the Conscience and to give it a certain satisfaction and calm which is better felt then it can be exprest But our Fathers were so far from receiving that Effect from the Doctrines and worship wherein they made in their days almost the Fundamentals of Religion to consist as in the Invocation of Saints the absolute Obedience to the Pope or to his Councils the conceit of Mens satisfactions the Adoration of Reliques the Pilgrimages and other things of the like nature they were I say so far from receiving it from these Doctrines that on the contrary they could not but feel secret remorses after having practised them For the Consciences of Christians are naturally carried out to none but God alone and cannot endure that that which is due to him should be divided between him and the Creatures They have naturally a reluctance to call upon any other Being then the first Cause of all to pay a Religious service to lifeless Images to subject themselves to any other Oracle then that of God to attribute any part of their Redemption to any others besides Jesus Christ who has acquired for them a fullness of Salvation And in a word to lay hold on any Creature as the object of their Confidence or Piety so our Fathers knowing from their own Experience that these Tenets and Devotions were not only barren of all that quiet but at the same time contrary to the peace of their Souls they could not but receive a great prejudice against those Tenets and against those Devotions themselves and against that Religion that proposed them 6. But that was not all they saw yet many things in that Religion most formally opposite to many plain and express passages of Scripture As the point of Images to the second Commandment Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image c. That of Communion only in one kind to that Command of Jesus Christ Drink ye all of this That of Praying in an unknown Tongue to the Prohibition of St. Paul in the fourteenth of the first Epistle to the Corinthians Else if thou shalt bless with the Spirit how shall he that occupieth the Room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks seeing he uuderstandeth not what thou sayest For thou verily givest thanks well but the other is not Edified And the business of blind Subjection to the Ministers of the Church to that strict Declaration of the Apostle We have not Dominion over your Faith That of the Papal Monarchy to these words of our Saviour The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship c. but it shall not be so with you That of humane satisfactions to the words of St. John The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all Sin And that of the Sacrifice of the Mass to that Doctrine of St. Paul to the Hebrews That Jesus Christ has once offered up himself for us I do not at all enquire whether the force of these passages may be eluded and distorted to a sence that may agree with those points which I have mentioned I do not enter upon that It is enough if any see that opposition of which I speak to appear at 1 sight that it likewise strikes the Soul and seems at least strong enough to Create great scruples and to form a prejudice that carri'd our Fathers on to examine those things a little more narrowly 7. To which they were yet further urg'd by the Consideration that they made of some Maxims and Distinctions which they ordinarily made use of to uphold the worshipping of Creatures for they discovered in them something that was extremly Scandalous For Example where they maintained the Worshipping of Angels and that of the Saints by saying that they did not adore them but by a lower sort of Adoration proportioned to the excellency they acknowledged to be in them not that they gave them that supream Adoration which is due to none but God alone I do not here put it in Question whether this distinction be good or bad it is sufficient that it had the ill luck to fall in with that which the Antient Heathens made use of for the defence of those Adorations which they paid to their Genius's to their Heroes to their Demy and inferiour Gods c. For the Pagans said the same that men did them great wrong in laying it to their charge that they worshipped their Genius's and inferiour Gods with that Soveraign Worship
condemn them to be burnt alive and to Cause that Sentence of their Condemnation to be executed For so that Council violated the publick Faith by a most Solemn and resplendent Action But it was not contented with that unless it did at the same time add a Decree that it expresly made on that Subject bearing this with it that all Letters of safe Conduct granted to Hereticks by any Emperors Kings or Princes ought not to hinder the Judges to whom it should appertain to take Cognisance of their Crimes whether they were Lay-men or Church-men from proceeding against them and punishing them with the greatest severity Aeneas Sylvius relates that that sentence through the force of which they were exposed to the Fire was given in Full Council Lata est says he in concessu Patrum adversus contumaces sententia CREMANDOS esse qui Doctrinam Ecclesiae respuerent prior igitur Joannes combustus est Hieronimus diu postea in vinculis habitus cum resipiscere nollet pari supplicio affectus He adds that those two men suffered that Torment with and admirable Fortitude singing of Hymns in the midst of the Flames This was in that time very astonishing to see a Council gathered in a Body wholly intent upon the causing the death of two Christians since it is certain amongst Christians that the Church has no power over the Temporal Lives of men But that Scandal was yet made greater by the way they carried it on for to come to that they made no difficulty of violating all that was the most sacred and inviolable in humane Society I would say the publick Faith given by the Authentick Authority of the Soveraign Magistrate and given with all the appearances of their own consents as one may collect from the Words of Aeneas Sylvius For he says as that Council was labouring in the affairs of Bohemia Placuit tandem Sigismundo Imperatore suadente Joannem Hieronymuus ad Synodum vocari They thought good through the Entreaties of the Emperor Sigismond that John and Jerome should be called to the Council They then made no scruple of violating that Faith to which they had consented and not only to break it by that Action and in that Practise but framed at the same time a Decree to authorise that breach of Faith and made it a lawful Rule for Posterity to go by Who can deny that our Fathers had not here a just cause to be shaken at that management of affairs which had violently born down all that wise and moderate men since have conceived and that they had not reason to joyn that to all those other things I have mentioned as a most powerful prejudice against a Religion that maintain'd it self by such strange proceedings 11. They might have added also to the rest methinks the establishment of Inquisitions and usage of Croisado's against those who were pretended to be Hereticks For it is most true that such a way of maintaining Religion by Torments and Armies raised by the Clergy as the Popes had used some ages since against the Waldenses the Albigenses the Wicklifists and the Hussites was not at all proper to make it be beloved or to instil into mens minds an extream good opinion of it There where they would introduce the Faith by force they shut up peoples hearts instead of gaining them That course is good no farther then for Temporal Monarchies or Mundane Religions where men are not much concerned whether they reign over the Spirits of men provided they reign over their Bodies But that is not at all the way that Jesus Christ uses who sets up his throne in their Consciences and who knows no other conquests but those which the sword that comes from his mouth gains 12. But besides those cruel ways which they made use of for the upholding their Religion they employed yet others as well as those which tho' they were not so severe did not fail of being as odious and of raising as strong suspitions against that Religion it self I might rank in this place those false Miracles which they invented every day to gain credit to some Doctrines and Devotions which of themselves had no foundation at all in the word of God For every own knows how much these sort of Fables were in use in the days of our Fathers and some Ages before with what care they spread them among the people in Preaching them up with Zeal and defending them with heat and in stuffing their Legends with them and other Books of that nature But every own knows likewise that the greatest part of them were so grosly invented that a very mean understanding could easily detect their falsness We might joyn with those false Miracles those stories of Visions or Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin or some other Saint to the Religious men or women which were so frequent that one can find nothing else in the Books of the Monks of those Ages We might Place here also those so often devised Tales of the returns of Souls out of Purgatory of their Apparitions their Complaints and pitiful Groans of their requests to be eased of their pains by their Masses and Foundations and of the outcries and terrible din that they made upon Mens least neglect to perform what they beg'd of them I do not now examine whether those Doctrines which gave ground to those pretended Miracles to those Visions and Apparitions were Evangelical or not it is enough for me to note that that falseness that appear'd in the greatest part of those gross Inventions which were so often publickly detected rendred that Religion justly suspected not only in respect of those Opinions and Devotions which they pretended to authorise by those frauds but also in general as to all that which came under the name of Traditions 13. Might we not say the same thing of so many forged and supposititious Books the making and use of which had been so frequent in the Ages that preceeded the Reformation not to meddle with what is reported of the Monks that they did not scruple to serve themselves by forged Deeds to enrich their Convents and gain Priviledges to them Without touching upon that there are few Persons that are ignorant of what Character the Decretal Epistles of the Antient Popes are collected under the name of one Isidore Mercator whereof the Court of Rome has made so advantagious a use for the establishing of its Authority and of the pretended donation of Constantine by which that Emperour is said to have given away the Roman Empire and all its rights to the Pope Every own knows also how they had forg'd whole Books and Treatises under the most Antient and Venerable names as the Epistle of the Blessed Virgin to Saint Ignatius the Works of Dionysius the Areopagite the Epistles of Saint Martial the Acts of the Passion of Saint Andrew by the Priests of Achaia the Liturgies of Saint James Saint Peter and of Saint Mark and divers others of the same nature
None are ignorant how they had mingled some false pieces into the true Works of the Fathers as in those of Justin Martyr of Origen of Saint Cyprian of Saint Athanasius of Saint Hilary of Saint Ambrose of Saint Chrysostome of Saint Jerome of Saint Augustin and almost generally of all the Fathers whose names they have made use of to authorise their forgeries None are ignorant what alterations they had made in the true writings of the Fathers whether by changing their words or adding to them or sometimes in cutting off considerable clauses and whole passages entire Who sees not that these ill practises which of themselves are so odious in all sorts of matters and especially in those of Religion could not but encrease the just suspitions that our Fathers had of all that which they named Tradition 14. We might make the same judgment of that visible abuse about Reliques which was brought into the Church For on the one side the devotion of the people was so hot as to that point that it could not keep it self within any measure and on the other the Cheats about them were so multiplied that even those of the weakest understandings could not behold them without being ashamed of them That prodigious quantity of the wood of the true Cross which is scattered over the World witnesses this as likewise the Slippers and Hose of Saint Joseph the Shift of the Blessed Virgin her Coifs her Fillets her Girdles her two Combs her Cloaths her Wedding-Ring the Sword wherewith Saint Michael fought with the Devil the twelve Combs of the Apostles some of the Stones wherewith Saint Steven was stoned the Skin of Saint Bartholomew the Coals that broiled Saint Laurence Aarons Rod the Bones of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob And beyond all that the multiplication of one and the same Relique which is to be found in divers places for there is nothing more ordinary then for one to see two three or four Bodies of the same Saint as of Saint Gervase Saint Protais Saint Sebastian of Saint Pretonilla Saint Anthony and some others All which being very much recommended to the People as the true objects of their Devotion not only without any certain grounds but very often with all the appearances of falsness could not but create a vast prejudice of corruption in that Church and Religion 15. Moreover when our Fathers cast their eyes upon the four chief means that God has established in his Church for the preserving of true Faith and Piety in it which are the Scriptures the publick Worship Preaching and the Sacraments and when they considered after what manner they were altered and the use of all those means almost brought to nothing it was not possible they could do otherwise than conclude that corruption whereof we dispute For as to the Scripture instead of making that the only Rule of Faith they had joyn'd Traditions with them that is to say the most uncertain thing in the World the most subject to Impostures and the most mixed with humane inventions and weaknesses Instead of recommending the reading of that Divine word to the Faithful for their Instruction and their Comfort it could scarce be found even in the hands of some Church-men And as for the Schools they knew far better how to quote Aristotle the Master of the Sentences Albertus Magnus Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure then the Prophets and Apostles As for the publick Service they performed it some Ages ago in a strange Tongue unknown to the people who by this means were depriv'd of that benefit which they might justly expect So that the Assemblies were become in that respect Springs stopt up for any publick edification and their little Prayers themselves the Lords Prayer and the Creed were then read almost only in Latin and the Women and Children and People seemed to know God only by the Idea that was given them of that Tongue in which notwithstanding they understood nothing As for Preaching besides that the Pulpit in the greatest part of that time was abandoned we have yet some Books of the Sermons which they made in those days as of Jacobus de Voragine of a Menot a Maillard a Barelette a Discipulus de Tempore which did no very great honour to their Age. They treat there far oftner of the Legends of the Saints then the truths of Religion and that which was yet more deplorable instead of the Word of God they Preached almost nothing else but scandalously extravagant Opinions raw Parallels of a Saint with Jesus Christ ridiculous stories pleasant buffooneries and such like things which to speak moderatly were exceedingly remote from the natural design of the Pulpit and rendred it not only despised but after a sort odious For that which respects the Sacraments not to touch on those multitudes of unprofitable ceremonies wherewith they had loaded them we must confess that that opinion of the necessity of the intention of the Priest which was so generally taught in the School and which Eugenius the Fourth had defin'd in his Instruction to the Armenians in the Council of Florence it destroy'd almost all the benefit of those sacred Mysteries and cast mens Consciences into perpetual scruples and uncertainties For unless they could establish a revelation for every particular Christian what assurance could we have that he who administers the Sacrament to us had an intention to do that which the Church enjoyns him to do or that he had not an intention contrary to that of the Church What assurance could be given that in all that long Train of Priests Bishops and Popes that is to say the Bishops of Rome who had been from the beginning of Christianity down to this present time there had not been any in whom that intention which they make so necessary to the operation of the Sacrament had been defective Yet if one only Priest that shall happen to Baptise a Pope had not had an intention to Baptize him or if he himself was not truly a Priest by the default of the intention of him who gave him Orders or him who Baptized him If one only Bishop who confers Orders on a Pope then when he is made Priest had not an intention to do what the Church pretends to do all that which would come in consequence of that default would be spoiled the Bishops that that Pope afterwards should promote would not be lawful Bishops the Priests on whom those Bishops had conferred Orders would be no lawful Priests and the Sacraments that those Priests should administer would not be lawfully administred What could our Fathers think of such a dreadful confusion which they knew not how to undo unless by supposing a perpetual Miracle Which is that God should have so over-rul'd the intention of all those men that howsoever Wicked Athestical Hypocritical or Profane they should have been yet that not one of them nevertheless should fail in having an intention to do that which the Church enjoyns But what assurance have we
of such a Miracle or what promise can we find of it in the Scripture Not to insist here that it very ill agrees with the Doctrine of those among them who make the will of man so much Lord of all his Actions that whatsoever Grace God shall manifest towards it it remains always indifferent and free to follow that Grace or to reject it It is then very certain that hitherto our Fathers could not be very much edified in the point of the Sacraments in general but they were yet far less in the matter of the Sacrament of the Eucharist in particular For if we look only on one side they were plung'd into that perplexity about the intention where they taught one another that the Transubstantiation of the Bread into the Body of Jesus Christ was the effect of that Consecration and that they were bound to Worship the Host after the words of Consecration as being Jesus Christ himself What assurance could they have of so important a change Since it also depended upon so impenetrable a secret as that of the intention of the Priest which could only be known by God alone what assurance could they have that they were not deceived What ground had they to give a supream Worship to an Object of which none could have any certainty of Faith what likelihood they should believe it to be that which it was pretended to be and that it ought to be reckoned an adorable Object What likelihood that God would have given to his Church so doubtful an object to be the object of perpetual adoration Which on one side is so visible and so determinate that one may always say Behold it but of which notwithstanding no one can be assur'd that it is that indeed Is it any ways agreeable to his goodness and his wisdom to leave the Church to be perpetually held in suspence in that inexplicable doubt and exposed to the danger of taking the Bread for the true Son of God and the Wine for his real Blood and reduc'd to the necessity of putting that adoration daily to a hazard upon the credit of one man CHAP. IV. That such a Corruption of the Latin Church as our Fathers had conceived was no ways an impossible thing THese things were well nigh the chief Objects that stroke the minds of our Fathers and cain'd them to a more strict examination of the matters of that Religion Whether those motives were weak or strong just or unjust I leave to the judgment of every rational man to determine But some may say what did your Fathers never call to mind that so ordinary Maxim and so generally receiv'd in their days That the Church could not err at least in matters relating to Faith and the general Rules of manners and if they had so call'd it to mind could they not by that very thing easily have repell'd all those importunate prejudices of corruption which you have set before us It cannot be doubted but our Fathers did often think of it but it cannot likewise be imagined that they would not have endeavoured to search a little more narrowly upon what that Maxim was founded what construction they ought to make of it if in a word that Corruption whereof they saw such great signs had been a thing absolutely impossible 1. I say then in the first place that one of the thoughts that most naturally fell into their minds upon this matter was this That the same thing which has happened almost in all human affairs might very well befall the Christian Religion in the space of about five hundred Years wherein it had been in the hands of the Romans Every one might observe it to be chang'd by the succeeding Age to be rendred so as it could not be known and to become quite another thing than it was at first according as they degenerated from their Original That inclination that men had to alter the first institutions of things to add to them or diminish from them to give to them new Forms and new Customs Reigned at least as much in our Western Parts as among other Nations It Reigned also so universally that there was nothing reserved from its Dominion either in their Languages or their Discipline or their Professions or in the Governments of the People or in their Laws or in the Distribution of Justice or in one word in any of those things that depend in any manner whatsoever on the management of men It had been then a kind of Miracle if Religion had been spared and its Truth its Worship and Customs regarded and kept with so great care that nothing should be altered in that either by additions or diminutions And we cannot say that Religion being so Heavenly and Divine a thing is also above all those accidents For it is most true that it is Divine in it self and consequently inviolable de jure and of right but there is none that sees it not in effect too often violated through the rashness of men and our Fathers were not ignorant that as perfectly holy as it was yet it was found to be as much or more exposed to the passions and disorders of the Soul of man in all other things 2. But besides that general Inclination which never fails to change things from their natural state our Fathers could not but know also that all men did very much lean towards superstitions and errours in the matters of Religion They saw the proofs of this in those Chimaera's wherewith the false Religions had filled the World Chimaera's that were yet so much the more strange as those people who believed and authorised them as the Greeks and Romans did appear as to every thing else to have minds exceedingly inlightened and refin'd which made our Fathers clearly see that blinde love that men always had for errours in the matters of Religion And without doubt that very thing carri'd them out to suspect that that pretention to Infallibility was null and vain and that there might very well be Corruptions in the State of the Church of those times for what likelihood was there that that ill inclination should have had no place among those of the Latin Church that it was wholly extinguish't beyond a possibility of returning or that the Enemy of our Salvation would not make use of it for our destruction or that having made use of it it should remain so long without any effect during the course of so many Ages 3. The example of the Church of Israel whereof the Bible teacheth us the History confirm'd our Fathers in those thoughts That was the very Church of God as well as that of the Christians That Church was purchased by the Blood of Jesus Christ as well as ours altho' that Blood had not yet been shed God not only kept his Chosen and his truly Faithful under that Ministration but he had not any other Church nor any other Ministry in all the World for the Salvation of his Children Whence it
follows not only that God had the same concern in the preservation of the purity of that Church as of that of the Latin Church but that he had yet a far greater For above this that Church had external help for the Conversation of its purity far greater than the Latin Church ever had For it was shut up in one only people and in one Country only It had one Language only one only Tabernacle one only Temple but one civil Government but one only Political Law and but one King where the Western Church had all those apart in many places And yet notwithstanding all that it could not be kept from Corruptions not only at one but divers times not only in matters of small Consequence but after a strange manner by a heap of depraved Traditions by false glosses on the Law by open Idolatries and by a multitude of other things wherewith their Prophets reproached them Had they not then very great reason to think that the Latin Church which had no peculiar promises that it should be kept from Corruption in being distinguisht from that of Israel was not more happy then that in the Conservation of its Purity 4. To this example of the Church of Israel our Fathers adjoyn'd that of the Greek and other Eastern Churches which God had at first honour'd with Christianity as well as the Latin and that the times had nevertheless so dissigur'd them that they did not any farther appear to be what they were heretofore Indeed into what errours and superstitions did not those Churches fall And in how many points does not the Church of Rome find it self to differ at this day from them Some of them observe Circumcision with Baptism others keep up the sacrificing of living creatures after the manner of the Jews some solemnly every Year Baptize their Rivers and their Horses others believe that the smoke of Incense takes away their sins others hold that the Prayers of the Faithful deliver from the pains of Damnation those Souls that are then in Hell others give Pass-ports in due Form to the dying to carry them to Paradise and a thousand other such-like impertinencies that are found to be establisht among those People Why might it not be possible that the Latin Church should have degenerated as well as those Churches Is it that their Christianity was from the beginning different from that of the Latin's or is it because the Latin Church had some peculiar priviledges beyond all others No certainly their Vocation was equal on one part and on the other and the nature of things being so if those Nations had corrupted themselves those of Rome might corrupt themselves as well as they 5. Our Fathers who were not ignorant of those Examples could not but represent all to themselves also in my judgment the times past wherein errours and corruption had visibly prevail'd over the Truth even then when those very Churches of the East and West were joyn'd together in one Body They knew that that had past in the Council of Antioch in favour of the Macedonians in the Councils of Sirmium of Milan of Ariminum at Selucia and at Constantinople in favour of the Arrians and in a Council at Ephesus in favour of the Eutychians without thinking of that which they said of those two Councils held at Constantinople in favour of the Iconoclastes or abolishers of Images the one under the Emperour Leo Isaurious the other under Constantine Copronimus That very thing was an evident token to them that the Latin Church might be very likely in their times fallen into other corruptions and that errour had triumpht over truth For it was not at all impossible that that which had hapned frequently in respect of some errours might not yet with greater success and longer duration happen in respect of other errours 6. Moreover They observed that Councils of a great name among the Latins as those of Constance and Basil had been rejected and opposed by other Councils and that in the most weighty points of Religion to wit in the Case of the Supreme Authority that ought to govern the Church upon Earth For some rais'd the Authority of the Councils above that of the Pope and others would have it that the Popes should have an absolute and an independent and perfectly Monarchical Rule over the Church what could our Fathers conclude from so manifest a contest if not that it had a vast confusion in it and that it was exceeding necessary to the quiet setling of their Minds and Consciences to enter on an examination of that which those men taught in the business of Religion 7. Our Fathers were confirmed in that design when they set before their eyes those obscure Ages through which the Latin Church had past For who knows not what the ninth tenth and eleventh Centuries were not to speak of those that followed them As for the ninth Baronius is forc't to conclude the History of it with saying That it was an Age of affliction to the Church in general and chiefly to the Church of Rome as well by reason of the complaints it had against the Princes of the West and East and the Schism of Photius as by reason of intestine and implacable Wars which had began then to be formed within the very Bosom of that Church That this Age was the most deplorable and dismal above all the rest because those who ought to have been watchful in the Government of the Church not only slept profoundly but the very same Persons laboured all they could intirely to drown the Apostolick-Ship For the Tenth as there are very few Persons but will acknowledge that it was buried in darkness more gross then that of Aegypt so it will be needless here to produce the proofs The eleventh was scarce happier and Baronius begins the History of it with a remark of so universal a Corruption of manners cheifly among the Church-men that it had made way says he for the common beleif of the near approach of Antichrist and of the end of the world How could it be possible that during such gloomy times Religion Faith and Worship should be preserved without any alteration Saint Paul has joyn'd together Faith and a good Conscience as two things that mutually sustain one another and has taken notice that those who cast off a good Conscience make Shipwrack of the Faith In effect saith Saint Chrysostome then when men lead corrupted Lives it is impossible they should keep themselves from falling into perverse Doctrines 8. To these considerations we might joyn that of the two sorts of Philosophies which successively had reign'd in the Church to wit that of Plato and the other of Aristotle to whose principles they had strove to accomodate the Christian Religion For it is scarce to be conceiv'd but that mixture of Platonic and Peripatetic Opinions with the Doctrines of Jesus Christ should have defaced the Faith and quite alter'd his true Worship It was for this
Reason that Saint Paul had caution'd the Faithful to take heed that no one seduc'd them through Philosophy and vain deceitful reasonings after the Traditions of men after the rudiments of the Wisdom of the World and not after Jesus Christ 9. They will say without doubt that all these considerations how strong soever they appear do yet make no more then conjectures and likelihoods which ought to have been immediatly stifled by the only name of the Church which improves so profound a respect for it self in the Souls of all true Beleivers But that very thing serv'd but to increase the just suspitions of our Fathers They understood what respect they ow'd to the Church but they were not also ignorant how easie it was to be deceiv'd by so specious a Name That visible society of men who profess Christianity which we call the Church is not wholly composed of true Believers it takes into its Bosome a great number of false Christians of wicked Worldly and Hypocritical men who are mingled with the good as chaff amongst the Wheat or as the mud of the Stream is with the Water of the Fountain And as on the one side the false Christians are not all so after the same manner for some are full of light and knowledge others of ignorance some are prophane others superstitious one sort are full of contrivances and intrigues in the affairs of Religion others take little care of its interests some are ambitious others covetous others fierce and inflexible others full of impostures and deceits according as we see those different humours ordinarily reign among the men of the world so on the other side the true Beleivers who are in the same visible Society have not all of them the same Degree either of knowledge or sanctification that they have more or less of natural light more or less of supernatural grace more or less of zeal of courage or of vigour according to the measure of the Spirit that is communicated to them it is now almost scarce conceivable that that Medley should not corrupt Religion in a long Train of Ages and that it should not cause to enter in Maxims Doctrines Services and Customs far more conformable to the Spirit of the World then to that of Jesus Christ There needs but a little leven saith Saint Paul to corrupt the whole Mass From thence that two Parties whereof the one is good the other is evil are joyned together experience always instructs us that the ill does far more easily deprave the good then the good better the bad And we cannot say that God is bound to hinder that Corruption and that otherwise his Church would Perish from the Earth For besides that it no way belongs to us to order so boldly what God is bound to do or not to do for the execution of his designs it is certain that he has not hindred it as we have but just before seen in the Church of the Jews nor in the Eastern Christian Churches nor in the the whole Body of the Church in the time of the Arians He has other ways to preserve his Elect and his sincerely Faithful ones who only are to speak properly his Church he can preserve them in the midst of a corrupted Ministry and when that is become impossible he knows how to separate them from the wicked and to draw them away from their Communion But we will speak to that more largely at the end of this Treatise 10. To go on with our Remarks That which I have said supplies us with another which is not less considerable than the rest It is in consequence of that mixture of the good and the wicked in the same visible Church that it might fall out and it has very frequently hapened that the far greatest Number the external Splendour Force and Authority is found among the Party of the wicked and that they are cheifly those who fill up the highest places in the Church For as those highest places yeild them honour and the goods of the World in a very great measure so it is very natural that they should be more hunted after and obtain'd by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful who ordinarily are not so violently carried out to those things After that manner one may very often see the Government of the visible Church to fall into exceedingly wicked hands and then there needs but a capricious Humour but a Passion but an Interest but a Whimsey but some neglect or some other thing of the like nature which it is not hard to conceive to be in such Persons as we suppose to bring into the Church false Doctrines and false Worship to which those of the best minds shall no sooner oppose themselves but they shall be immediatly quell'd which often forces them to keep silence and to give way for a season till it shall please God to deliver them from that oppression 11. Could it not in the least happen that those errours and superstitions that were but little taken notice of at first sprung up in the Schools or among some other sort of men should be by little and little and insensibly spread over the Body of the Church by the means of ignorance and negligence of the Pastours And might not the same thing fall out according to the pleasure and interest that the Pastors might take to see them establish't that in the end being found to be rooted in mens minds and as I may so say incorporated into Religion they might be lookt upon as Traditions or as Customs that for the future ought to be observ'd as Laws No one can deny that a multitude of things had crept after that manner into the Latin Church as the keeping back the Cup which the Concil of Constance had taken up in express terms as a Custome that had been says it rationally introduc'd and which ought to be kept as a Law It was after the same manner that the Celibacy of Priests the Worshipping of Images the Distinction of Meats and many other things which how particular and private soever they were at first came after to be made publick and in the end to be changed into Articles of Religion 12. All these Reflexions might serve to let our Fathers understand that it was no ways impossible for the state of the Latin Church to be corrupted but besides that Reason those examples and that experience which convinc't them of it they yet farther saw the plain proofs of it in the Declarations of the Holy Scripture For after whatsoever manner they expounded that Mystery of Iniquity of which Saint Paul speaks to the Thessalonians which in his days had began to work and that Captivity of God's People whom God commanded to go out of Babylon lest in partaking of its sins it partook also of its plagues no one could avoid acknowledging from those two places but that a great Corruption must needs fall out in the visible Church The
word mentioned either there or any where else And as to that passage Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build my Church c. Whether they understand it of that Confession which Saint Peter had made or whether they refer it to his person I say that no one can understand it of his Successors since there is not any mention made of them either directly or indirectly For when the See of Rome was not when it had never yet been The Church did not fail of being built upon that Confession of Saint Peter comprehended Jesus Christ upon whom the Church is every way built but also because that Confession of Saint Peter or Saint Peter Confessing was as one of the Chief Stones in that mystical Building which is not left alone for Jesus Christ who is not only the Foundation but the Soveraign Architect has added many others in all Ages and will always joyn others to them till the Building be intirely finished that is to say till God fulfilled the Decree of his Election But to go on with our Discourse of the Visibility of the True Church I affirm in the third place that we ought to know very well what a True Church Visible is For we ought not to imagine that all those persons who compose that Visible Society should be that True Church None but those True Believers I would say those who joyn to their external Profession of Christianty a true and sincere Piety are really the Church of Jesus Christ and as for the others that is to say the worldly Prophane and Hypocritical they are but the Church in appearance only and not indeed For having no inward Calling which consists in Faith and Love they do not belong to the Mystical Body of our Saviour nor are they of his Communion Notwithstanding they do not fail to be mixt with the Faithful by reason of that external profession as if they really were in the same Religious Society with them What then is the Visibility of the True Church as to us It is not that we can distinctly and with any certainty affirm Behold these be the Truly faithful of Jesus Christ None but but God alone can know them after that distinct manner and and without a possibility of being deceived But this we may say of that Visible Society that Vnder that Ministry and in that Communion God preserves and raises the truly Faithful Whence we may from this Judgment with Solidity and Truth and I may say also without a possibility of being deceived that there is a True Visible Church In that sence I declare that there has always been some way or other a True Church Visible upon Earth not but that God can make it wholly disappear to the Eyes of men whensoever it shall please him to do so without doing men any wrong or any breach of his promises since he has without doubt extraordinary ways to beget Faith in the hearts of his Children and to keep them on in that course and to lead them in the end unto Salvation without making use either of the publick Assemblies or Ministry but only because we ought not to believe that there ever hapned since the first rise of Christianity an Eclipse so full and intire that one could not some way say There is a Society in which God does keep the truly Faithful I say after some way For as that Judgment depends on two things the one to be able to know a Society and a Ministry and the other to know that under that Ministry and in that Society a Man may work out his own Salvation in respect of the first it is necessary to distinguish between two seasons the one of Liberty and Prosperity where the Church has its Assemblies and exercises its Ministry openly in the face of all the World For then she is much more visible then she would be otherwise that is to say it is far more easy to be known what Society and what Ministry that is Such was the State of the Church under Constantine and other Christian Emperours and it is in such times as those that the promises of Its outward splendour if there are any such in Scripture are accomplished The other season is that of its Afflictions and Persecution such was that of the first Century of the Church under the Pagan Emperours and the Enemies of Christianity For none can deny that then the Church was less discernable by its Assemblies not only because they were more private and less exposed to the publick view but also yet further because the name of Christian had been defamed by a thousand calumnies and charged with a thousand false imputations which made the knowledge of the Church to be far more difficult And it will be to no purpose to say That then the Church was visible and illustrious by the blood of its Martyrs For the blood of its Martyrs did not in the least hinder the accusing of the Christians of most odious crimes that which hindred its being liable to be easily known Those Accusations were as a Cloud before the eyes of the Common people which was necessarily to be discipated before they could come to know what Christianity was So that the True Church is more or less Visible according to the difference of its Seasons As to the second thing which is to know that one may be saved in that Society and under that Ministry it is necessary that we distinguish of the two States or Conditions wherein that Society may be found The one is a more pure State then when the word of God is preached without mixtures of the Doctrines of men when the publick Worship is perform'd without superstitions and the Sacraments plainly administred according to their Primitive Institution and when generally Religion is established taught and observed after the same manner wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles left it to the World In that Condition it is certain that the True Church in very visible and very discernable for it is easy to behold all the Characters of its Truth which only consist in its Conformity to that lively primitive and natural Image of Christianity which God has left us in his Holy Scriptures But it is not less certain that a Church may fall into a quite contrary Condition that is to say into a State of Corruption then when it adds to divine Truths strange and adulterate Doctrines when it mingles superstitions with the true Worship of God and when in stead of a just Government it exercises an insolent and absolute Dominion over Mens Consciences in one word then when all things appear so confused and in that disorder that one can scarce any more see any traces of that beautiful and glorious Image of Christianity which I have before spoke of to shine forth In that Condition I affirm that True Church is very hard to be known for howsoever it were most Visible in quality of a Church because its Assemblies might be
if you would give to the simpler sort to those Babes for Example whereof Jesus Christ speaks that his Mysteries have been revealed unto them if you give them I say that right and liberty to judge of that important and fundamental Question to wit Whether the Call of a man be Extraordinary and Divine or whether it be not so whether his Miracles are those of a true Minister of God or of a false Prophet whether it be a true Angel of Light or a disguised Angel of darkness and to judge of all those things after the Church and against the Church I see no Reason why they should refuse them the right and liberty of judging also of its Doctrine and the points of Religion whereof the true knowledge is by nothing near so difficult God had forewarned his People that they should not give themselves over to be deceiv'd by the first appearances of Miracles and he had appointed that they should judge of them by the Doctrine they accompanied Whence it follows that the discerning of Miracles and judging of that Doctrine are two inseparable things and that their right belongs to the same persons If there arise saith God among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other Gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams For the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart It appears from thence that the way for men to judge well of Miracles is to examine the Doctrine of him that works them So that if they will a gree to give the people a right to discern Miracles they cannot take away from them that of discerning that Doctrine they uphold Jesus Christ supposes the same thing when he says that there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and that they shall work great signs and wonders to seduce if it were possible the very Elect. For how could they otherwise discern those Miracles of the false Prophets but by examining their words So a famous man of the Roman Communion has not scrupled to write that we are bound to reject Miracles and those men who make use of them then when they are joyned with a Doctrine which the Church has condemned his words are considerable and very well deserve to be transcrib'd The Application says he and direction of a miracle to prove the Truth of a Doctrine is an enterprise so rash and so scandalous that it deserves to be punished There is not any Catholic in the World who knows his Creed and understands it that can be capable of such a persuasion What if the appearance of a Miracle is contrary to the definitions of the Church can any one hesitate or doubt whether it would be better to adhere to the Church supported by the truth of a Miracle or to deny the truth of a Miracle founded upon the Authority of the Church Saint Peter has taught us a great while since what we are to do on that occasion He had been an eye Witness of the Transfiguration of our Saviour and of that glory that lay hid under the Vail of a Suffering and Mortal state and yet nevertheless he trusts more in the obscurity of Prophets than to the clear and manifest experience of his Eyes we have a more sure word of Prophesie The Authority of the Church which is in nothing less than that of the Prophets breaks in pieces all those reasons that oppose it and we ought to take to our selves in regard of the Church that which Saint Peter says with respect to the Prophets To which we do well that we take heed gathering together all our attention to know the true sence of the Church and turning aside from all the Miracles and all those Reasons the men propound to us to make us call into question that which we know the Church to have determined We may see clearly by that passage how far one may carry that Principle of the Authority of the Church in the thoughts of those that admit of it that is to say even to make Miracles themselves submit to it He says that we ought to Collect all our attention to know the true Sentiments of the Church and to turn aside from all those Miracles which would make us call into question that which the Church has determined He says that to go about to make use of Miracles for the proving of a Doctrine that is condemned by the Church is a rash and scandalous enterprise and such as deserves to be punished In effect if they suppose that Maxim that we ought to give to the Church an absolute obedience to see with her Eyes and to rest upon her Conduct those Miracles could not make them be heard whom the Church should have condemned and by which they should have been looked on as false Miracles the Consequence is good and just But because that very thing applied to the times of the first rise of Christianity justifies the Unbeleivers condemns the proceedings of Jesus Christ and his Appostles accuses those of rashness who have believed on their preaching destroys the Gospel and overthrows the Christian Church it is a manifest proof that that Maxim it self is false and rash since those Consequences that arise from it are so detestable that they leave neither to Jesus Christ nor to the Apostles any way to make their Gospel to be heard by men with a good Conscience and the care of their Salvation 8. They must give me leave to speak a little earnestly for the interest of our Lord Jesus Christ The more I consider these inevitable Consequences of that Maxim the more I am astonished If those first Christians who had been Jews could not hear the Doctrine of the Son of God nor receive his Miracles without violating of their Duty toward the Church that had condemned them what scruples might not all that cast into all the Christians that are at this day in the World For in fine we are the Successors of that people our Fathers were not Converted but by their Ministry If then we cannot see clearly that they themselves had a right to be Converted if they laid down on the contrary a Principle which of right ought to have hindered their Conversion where then are all we as many as we are The Reasons that the Author of those Prejudices produces to make us devest our selves of our own guidance in favour of the Church that we should see with her Eyes and tread in her steps had as much place with the Jews as they have with us they could not doubt but that their Church was the Church of God none can dispute with them that eminent Authority which had so many external marks To her belonged the Adoption the
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
principle of Unity would they give us to settle all in the same thoughts in that search which they should make of the true Church The Jews would say We are the true Church of God the Mother Church from which the Christians have separated themselves The Pagans will say We are that Mother Communion for as well the Jews as the Christians came out of the midst of us The Mahometans will say That as Christianity was the perfection of the Law so their Religion is the perfection of the Gospel The Greeks would come foorth and maintain That they are the true Catholick Church and not the Latins the Copticks the Abyssines the Jacobites and Armenians maintain That as well the Latins as the Greeks departed from the Church when their Council of Chalcedon had made void the Council of Ephesus The Arians will say That if one latter Council could abrogate what had been done by a former as it appears from the Example of the Council of Chalcedon then that of Ariminum might very well correct and repair the Errors of that of Nice In fine every one would alledge his Reasons and concern himself to know which of all those Communions was the true and good one and which had the true Faith Tell us what means of Unity would you have beyond that to hinder men from dividing themselves For if it be true that in yielding men a right to examine the matters of Religion they open a Gate to let in Divisions and Heresies by reason of the Confusion of mens minds it is not less true that in leaving them a liberty to examine those Churches and Religious Societies to come to know which is the True you open the same Gate to Errors and Apostacies If you would further take from them that Liberty of searching out the true Church and if you say that they ought to suppose the Latin to be it without other reason besides that that is very absurd you introduce a Maxim that under a pretence of shutting the Door to all Divisions shuts it also to all Conversions For why should not every Society have right to say the same thing So the Jew without any other Reason would presume for the Jewish Communion the Heathen for the Heathen the Greek for the Greek and every one for that wherein he finds himself set That then would not be so much a Principle of Unity in the true Faith as a Principle of Confusion and Obstinacy a Principle that would be not so proper to keep men in the Unity of the true Faith as in that of any Religion whatsoever it might be without coming to know whether it were good or bad In the second place I say That with all that they do not yet make any thing of that which they would lay down if they would avoid those Heresies and those Divisions which may arise from the inequality of humane understandings when men are left to be Masters of their own Sentiments For to obtain that effect they must suppose that that Maxim of referring ones self absolutely to the Pastors of the true Church when they shall be so assured will be received and followed by all men But who can tell them that men will not divide upon that very Principle and that when they endeavour to make them receive it they can make them agree If they apprehend so much those Divisions and Errors in the matters of Religion what assurance can they have that there shall not be any upon that point of the Authority of the Church Is it because mens minds will less differ about that subject then about others or that that same Authority proves it self as the First Principles do Who has told them that those who shall once have received this Maxim will not be un-blinded in the end and that they will not be weary in fine of remaining slaves to men in respect of their Consciences which is the most considerable part of themselves and that which should give them the greatest Jealousie So that that pretended Remedy of Schisms and Divisions is null for you must always run upon that Rock you would avoid to wit of the humane understanding and wipe off its differences its inequalities its humors at the same time that you would have them give away that liberty of judging the points of the Faith Let us suppose since our Adversaries would have us that that Principle of absolute obedience to the Guides of the Church had had place from the birth of Christianity would it have hindred the Heresies of the Valentinians of the Gnostics of the Marcionites of the Montanists and the Manichees Would it have hindred the Arrians the Samosatences the Eutychians the Nestorians and so many others that in the first Ages of Christianity troubled the State of Religion To say that those men were presumptuous and rash is but to say what we would have which is that there can be no humane means that can stop that rashness and presumptuousness of men and that it is a folly to go about to do it They may by the force of Torments and Prisons by their Threats or their Promises hinder the external effects but that is not to contain men in the Unity of the Faith but it is to contain them in that of Hypocrisy and of Treachery A second Inconvenience is That they cannot give to the Church that is to say to the Body of the Pastors that respect which is due to them for where they should be set up to be Judges of Controversies private men would rise up against them and those private men would on the contrary become their Judges But that Inconvenience is not so great as that it should make us hazard our own Salvation How many Judges have in we our Civil Society to whom we yet give that respect that is due to them though still we are not bound to believe that all that they have judged is well judged The respect which men owe to their Pastors is not unlimited it has its bounds and its measures while they act as true Pastors in Teaching the pure Truth and acquitting themselves of their Duty they are worthy to be heard to be followed to be respected But when they come to be Deceivers if that in stead of Teaching the Truth they oppose it if they mix with Gold and Silver Wood Hay and Stubble to make use of the words of the Apostle they deserve in that regard neither the Hearing nor Respect For they are neither Pastors nor the Church but only as they Teach the Truth and follow Righteousness and when they withdraw themselves from it give us their own Fancies or when they follow their Passions then they are but private men who belye their Character and they can owe them nothing for those kinds of things but repulses and contempt or at the most but Indulgence if the Evil be yet tolerable that is to say if their word and their conduct do not destroy the Gospel or hinder a saving
whole Scripture is full of this Doctrine that the Spirit of God is immediately given to every Believer even down to that place where St. John tells them That they had an Vnction from the Holy Spirit and that they knew all things that the anointing which they had received of Jesus Christ abode in them and that they needed not that any man should teach them but that that anointing taught them all things From whence these two Truths result the one That every faithful one in particular has Fellowship with the Holy Spirit which animates and governs him immediatly and the other That that Spirit is not a meer Spirit of Docility and resting in what is taught them to make the Faithful receive the words of their Pastors but a Spirit of discerning which makes them capable of knowing things by themselves and to judge of them For this is that St. Paul means by that Spirit of Wisdom and of Revelation and St. John by that Vnction which teaches all things and frees us from the necessity of being taught by men that is to say of depending absolutely on their Authority as those men would do who should not be capable of discerning by themselves and there is this thing very considerable in that Discourse of St. John that he makes the subjects of it those false Teachers who laboured to seduce the Faithful I have says he wrote these things concerning those who seduce you But the anointing which you have received abideth in you and you have no need that any man should teach you c. Which lets us plainly see that he meant that that Unction was sufficient to secure them from that Seducing and by Consequence to make them discern by themselves the true from the false As to all the rest they do but mock when they call that Spirit a private Spirit under a pretence that it is given to each Believer for it is the same Spirit that animates the whole Mystical Body of our Saviour that Regenerates and Sanctifies them it is in one word the Spirit of the whole Church It may with far greater reason be said that they introduce a private Spirit who restrain to the Pastors alone the right of discerning the good from the bad and who would not that any Laymen should interpose For if the whole body be animated but by one only and the same Spirit why should not all the Faithful have the same right with the Pastors since they all partake of one same Light though in a different measure In fine if they would have it that to yield to every one a right to examine the matters of Religion would be to bring in a private Spirit let them tell us by what Spirit they would have one examine the question of the Church by what Spirit they would have every one know and rest assured that the Latin Church is the True Church of Jesus Christ by what Spirit they would have the Faithful chuse that side where they should refer themselves to their Pastors for in all those points they cannot deny that men ought to follow their own light since they cannot in the least make those judgments by the Eyes of their Prelates as we have noted before Behold then that private Spirit since it pleases these Gentlemen to call it so which they themselves are constrained to admit which shews us the nullity of that inconveence that they would pretend to remedy We ought then to go higher yet and to examine that great Argument which the Author of those Prejudices has chose above all others as being alone sufficient to make us acknowledge the necessity of referring ones self blindly to the Church It consists in letting us know That all the men in the world may deceive themselves that the darkness of our Vnderstandings our Prejudices and our Passions engage us to that And if M. Claude says he can propose evident falshoods as proofs of the highest certainty who can assure us that we are not in the number of those who deceive themselves and make an ill choice in the matters of Religion and that the persuasion that we have well chosen is not any effect of our Prejudices and our Passions and other secret obstinacy in our Opinions from whence he concludes that it must be a thing to be despaired of ever to be able to distinguish the true Religion amidst so many Sects who all lay claim to it or to chuse among so many Opinions which they propose as Authorised by the Scripture those which one ought to believe from those that one ought to reject unless that same impotence that lies upon us to discern the Truth by our own light and which would not open a way to find it should make us go from the way of Reason wherein we should see nothing but uncertainty to that of Authority which would draw us out of that confusion and in the end he advertises us that that Authority is that of the Catholick Church that is to say the Latin Prelates We see then that thanks to the Philosophy of this Author all must be good Pyrrhonists to become good Catholicks we ought to doubt of every thing if we would be assured of any thing But to speak what appears to me that Argument cannot make any impression on the mind because it destroys it self as usually those false subtilties do For if we cannot be assured in those judgments that we make by our own Light because that may deceive us who can assure us that that Authors Argument will be good and concluding since we cannot judg of it but by that same Light which will not give according to him any certainty If the use of our Reason produces nothing but doubts why would he yet give us a Reason the Consequence whereof can be no other than doubtful and by which he cannot also gain any thing over us It may be it is good it may be it is not so our Light deceives us in other things it may very well deceive us in that What likelyhood then is there that we should be persuaded by an Argument that combates it self and which takes away from it self the force of persuading Moreover That Argument destroys the design of the Author of those Prejudices and overthrows the Cause it would Establish For if there be no certainty in the judgments that we make by our own Light who shall secure us that we do not deceive our selves in chusing the way of Authority since we cannot make choice of that but by that same Light which is says he so deceitful We cannot less fear in that very thing the obscurity of our Understandings our Prejudices and Passions the inclination that we have to Error and who shall assure that Author who shall assure us our selves that that persuasion where it is and which he would communicate to us is not an effect of his Prejudices of his Passions or of some obstinacy in his Opinions Who shall warrant
us that we do not deceive our selves in that particular choice that we make of the Authority of the Latin Church to refer our selves to her For we must in that choice rely on our own Reason Who shall secure us that the Lain Church herself does not deceeive her self in the discerning that she makes of the Tenets of Religion That Church is composed of the People and Prelates those people have not more Light than other men and those Prelates are not less subject than the others to that darkness of understanding to Negligence to Prejudices to Passions to a secret Obstinacy in their Opinions and beyond all that they have not a peculiar Interest to favour mens Errors and Superstitions to retain them the more easily in their obedience But those People and those Prelates are a very great number What does that signifie The Heathens and their Guides are yet a far greater number than they and yet they fail not to deceive themselves They are say they rich and powerful and raised in dignity The Heathens and the Mahometans are not less They have external marks but who knows whether those marks are good and whether they do not abuse themselves in the Consequence they pretend to draw from them They assure you that they do not deceive themselves they condemn you if you do not believe that which they believe and they live as to themselves in a perfect peace of mind But the Author of those Prejudices has taught us to answer That all those who compose other Societies appear to have the same assurance with us that they are in the Truth they do not condemn the Latins with less confidence than the Latins condemn them with they are not less exempt from the fear of deceiving themselves they live also in as great a Peace and Tranquillity That assurance also and that confidence that freedom from trouble and fear that Peace and that Tranquillity grounded upon the belief that they are in the right way and that they walk after their Light are marks so ambiguous and so deceitful that they may be found most frequently to be joyned infinitely more frequently with Errour and the way of Hell than with Truth and the way of Salvation These are the very words of the Author of those Prejudices whereof we change only the Application But say they yet farther Do you not believe that the Latin Prelates have a more clear light than you We cannot know any thing by that and they do not know anything themselves from thence since no person can make himself certain by his own light according to the Author of Prejudices They may from thence methinks see of what Nature that Argument is but they will be more apt to be distasted with it if they will but consider that their Principle tends to confound all Religion and to render the very existence of a Deity suspected For if there be nothing of certainty in those Judgments that we make by our own light why do we follow the Christian Religion more than the Pagan or the Mahometan Is it because that the Church has bid us do so This is but a very bad reason for the Church would never tell us that its Religion was bad when it would be so in effect there is no Society whatsoever but would say that its Religion was good and better than all others Is it because our Birth our Education Interest Reputation or the the friendship that we have with some persons or the Laws of the Country wherein we are will not suffer us to embrace any other Religion and such-like motives that engage us These are yet but the very worst Reasons and those who are not Christians but from thence though possibly they may not be a small number may say that they are not at all such for if those very tyes had been applyed to Paganism they would have been Pagans as they are now Christians How then ought we to be Christians It is necessary that we should be so from out of a Love and Approbation of that Religion it self But that Love and that Approbation ought to be the effects of our own Light and not of that of other men and our own light ought to dictate to us what is the Religion of God and to make us approve of and love it under that quality Should we then have nothing of certainty in that matter should we be always in doubt under a pretence that our Light might deceive us and those admirable effects that Religion produces in our souls that confidence quiet joy that tranquillity hope freedom from trouble and from fear would they be nothing but ambiguous and deceitful marks which are most frequently to be found more joyned with error and the way of Hell then with the Truth and way of salvation thither it is that that Principle of the Author of those Prejudices leads us Besides how do we come to believe there is a God Is it because the Church tells us so That would be a very ill reason for we believe on the contrary that there is a Church but by the belief that we have that there is a God we believe it without doubt by the impression of a thousand Characters of the Deity in our minds and on our hearts that appearin the Fabrick of the World in his Government or his ordering the Affairs of it and particularly in man himself and in his most pure and most natural inclinations Our Reason it self is a lively Image of it But that impression is wrought but by our own Eyes which make us see a Deity in things it is not by others Eyes that we see it but by our own Is it necessary then that we should doubt whether there be a God or not Must we never be certain because our Eyes deceive us somtimes and because we are not Infallible The Author of the Prejudices will say without doubt That we urge his Principle too farr that he never pretended to shew that we could not be assured by our own light without the Authority of the Church that there was a God and that the Christian Religion in opposition to that Religion which the Jews now profess or to all those Fantastick Religions that reign in the World and are the meer effects of the impostures and humours of men cannot but be the true Religion That that discernment is not hard to be made the advantage of the Christian Religion above all those others being most clear and manifest Indeed so he has explained himself from the very beginning of his Preface whence it appears that he would not hinder the examination of the matters of Religion but when particular controversies that divide the divers Sects of Christians shall be treated of I may say then if I am not mistaken That there are two parts in his Hypothesis that in the first he yields to every one a liberty to judg by his own Light of the Truth of the Christian Religion
and that he does not take away from them in that respect the certainty of their Judgments but that in the second he takes it from them over other particular matters but all that is but an Artifice whereby he would prevent and elude if he could those just and natural Consequences which he foresaw might be drawn from his Principle For the very same Reasons which he proposes to hinder us from the examining the particular points of Religion and the very same grounds upon which he builds his Conclusion have place also in the comparing the Christian Religion with other Religions So that one may say that the second part of his design destroys the first and that he himself overthrows that that he had establisht For tell me if the uncertainty of our Judgments founded upon this that we see that others deceive themselves by the darkness of our understanding by our Prejudices by our Passions and by those secret Attacks that we have of our thoughts tell me if that has not place as well in the Judgment that they make That there is a God and that the Christian Religion is alone from God and the only True one as in that that we make That their Purgatory is but an imaginary Fire that their Transubstantiation is but a human invention and that the Sacrifice of the Mass is no where to be found in the Scripture Are there no Profane or Atheistical persons in the World Are there no Jews nor Pagans nor Mahometans As we are persuaded that they deceive themselves so are they persuaded that we deceive our selves but may not they demand of us what assurance we have that the darkness of our Understandings our Prejudices our Passions or some other secret tye that lyes upon our thoughts have no part in our persuasion What will the Authour of the Prejudices answer to them Will he say That the advantage that the Christian Religion has over all other Religions is most clear and manifest I may say to him the same that the advantage that the Protestant Religion has above the Roman is most clear and manifest and in saying so I shall affirm nothing whereof I am not well convinced If he replies to me that I ought not to be so confident of my own Light that that which appears to me to be most clear and manifest does not appear so to others that the darkness of the Mind Prejudices Passions c. make men deceive themselves and that I have no assurance that I am not of that number The Jew the Mahometan the Pagan the Libertine the Atheist who shall come behind him will exclaim as often as they shall have occasion after the same manner This is justly what we have to say this Author pleads our cause admirably well After all That Principle of the Author of those Prejudices was so far from turning aside our Fathers from examining by themselves the matters of Religion that on the contrary it bound them to do it the more For being concerned for their own salvation there was no person more intrested than themselves and being so easily apt to deceive themselves in the choice of those Opinions that they were enjoyned to believe and of that Worship which they were to practise they ought not naturally to have trusted any but themselves They might it is true deceive themselves but their Prelates might deceive themselves as well as they and if in the Church the people must refer themselves to their Prelates and each of those Prelates in particular must refer themselves to the whole body of the Church they will find that neither the one nor the other will be cured and that that Church to which they should all refer themselves would be but an Ens Rationis as they speak in the Schools and a Platonic Idea Prudence then bound our Fathers to examine that which they should know both from the imperfections of the Minds or the Hearts of men and from the examples of those before them who fell into error together with the danger which men are in on the account of their Prejudices their Passions and their Interests all that could produce no other effect in them than to excite them to make an examination the most exactly and diligently that it was possible for them to do cleansing their Hearts from every evil thought and imploring the Grace and Blessing of God upon them For they were assured that if they did the Will of the Father they should know his true Doctrine and that if any did lack Wisdom begg'd it of God that he would give it them since he gives to all liberally and upbraideth not Those are the promises of the Gospel Those to whom God grants that Grace which inlightens the mind and opens the Heart do not only not deceive themselves in the choice of Saving Doctrines and in the rejecting of those that are Damnable but they have for that all the assurance that they can reasonably wish for for the Truth makes it self to be perceived by far other Characters than those of a disguised falshood The Invocation of Saints the Worshipping of Images the Adoration of the Host the Conceit of Purgatory have never produced in the souls of the Devout Persons of the Church of Rome that sweet joy that Peace and that Contentment of the Soul which the Protestant rejoyces in when he calls upon God alone when he Worships him without Images as he has commanded him when he Adores Jesus Christ sitting at the Right Hand of his Father and when he places his only Confidence in his Satisfaction and in his Merit a deceived Conscience may be sometimes in Security but that security is never enjoyed like a true Quiet It is the Rest of a Lethargy where a mans feels no pain because he has no feeling which is very different from that Rest that gives a perfect Health besides that the security of a deceived Conscience is not long continued inquietudes return from time to time chiefly in the Affections and at the time of Death where that Tranquillity that the True Religion gives is solid and well grounded and displays its vertue peculiarly in the most grievous Accidents of our Life and in the very Agonies of Death it self Such are those Divine impressions that David felt when he said The Law of the Lord is perfect Converting the soul the Testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple The statutes of the Lord are right rejoycing the heart his judgments are more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey And elsewhere Thy word has been sweet unto my taste yea sweeter than honey to my mouth And yet further in another place The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him and he will shew them his covenant The Disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ felt them when they said Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way and while he opened to us the
Scriptures And upon another occasion Lord to whom shall we go Thou hast the words of Eternal Life And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ the Son of the living God If those of the Church of Rome were accustomed to the reading of the Holy Scripture they would find the proofs of this Truth in a thousand places but the far greatest part of our Controversies come from the neglect they have of that Divine Book and that neglect it self is one fruit of that excessive confidence they have in their Guides The End of the First Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE SECOND PART Of the Justice of the Reformation CHAP. I. That our Fathers could not expect a Reformation either from the hands of the Popes or from those of the Prelats WE may now methinks suppose it evident and proved That our Fathers had a right and were bound to examine by themselves the matters of Religion and not to refer themselves absolutely to the Conduct and Authority of their Prelats But from thence it manifestly follows that they had a right to Reform themselves For since they could examine only in order to discern the good from the bad and the true from the false who can doubt that they having a right to make that discernment would not also have had a right to reject that which they should have found to have been contrary to or alienated from Christianity which is precisely that which is called Reformation I acknowledge that it yet remains to be inquired into whether those things which they have rejected are indeed Errors and Superstitons as they are pretended to be and whether they did not deceive themselves in the Judgment that they made But who sees it not necessary for the deciding of that Question to go to the bottom and to enter upon that discussion which our Adversaries would avoid From whence it may appear as I have said in the beginning that all that Controversy which they raise against us about the Call of our Reformers is nothing else but a vain amusement and that to make a good Judgment of that Action of our Fathers and to know whether it be just or unjust we ought always to come to the bottom of the cause and to those things themselves which are Reformed for upon that the Question doth wholly depend whether they did well or ill Notwithstanding to shew that we would forget nothing that may serve for our Justification and that after the desire to please God we have not a greater then that of approving our selves to our Country-men and in general to all men we shall not fail to make yet some particular Reflexions upon the Circumstances of the Reformation which will more and more confirm the right of our Fathers and manifest the Justice of their Conduct and at the same time we shall answer to some Objections of the Author of the Prejudices That shall be the business of this Second Part. Our first Reflexion shall be on that deplorable State of the Latin Church in the days of our Fathers in respect of its Prelats for its Condition was such that there was no more hope of ever seeing a good Reformation to spring up by their Ministry In effect what could be expected from a Body that had almost wholly abandoned the care of Religion and of the Salvation of Souls which was plunged in the intrigues and interests of the World which kept the People in the ignorance of the Mysteries of the Gospel and in the most gross Superstitions and with which the whole body it self did entertain it self and was found to be possest by Ambition by Luxury and by Covetousness and engaged in the vilest manners and living in almost a general opposition to overthrow of all Discipline They will SEE then what a German Bishop says in a Book intituled Onus Ecclesiae who lived and wrote in the year 1519. that is to say near the very time of the Reformation but one who was no ways Luthers friend as it appears by his writings I am afraid says he That the Doctrine of the Apostle touching the Qualifications of a Bishop is but very ill observed in these days or rather that we are fallen into those Times which he noted when he said I know that after my departure ravenous Wolves will come among you not sparing the flock Where may one see a good man chosen to be a Bishop one approved by his works and his Learning and any one who is not either a Child or Worldly or Ignorant of spiritual things The far greater number come to the Prelateship more by underhand canvassings and ill ways then by Election and lawful ways That Disorder which may be seen in the Ecclesiastical Dignities sets the Church in danger of perishing for Solomon says There is one evil which I have seen under the Sun as an Error which proceedeth from the Ruler when a fool is raised to high dignity It is therefore that I said that the Bishops ought to excel in Learning to the end that by their Instructions and their Preaching they might govern others profitably But alas What Bishop have we now a days that Preaches or has any care of the Souls committed to him There are besides that very few who are contented with one Spouse alone that is to say with one only Church and who seek not to appropriate to themselves more Dignities more Prebends and what is yet more to be condemned more Bishopricks Our Bishops are feasting at their own Tables then when they should be at the Altar they are unwise in the things of God but they love the wisdom of the World they are more intent on Temporal Affairs say it may be that I suffer my self to be carried away by my Passion and that all these clamourous Accusations are but the effect of that Engagement in which we all are set against the Church of Rome But to leave no ground for that Suspicion besides what I have set down in general in the second Chapters of my first Part I will further produce here more particular Testimonies of that Truth by applying them to the Ages of our Fathers I will say nothing of my own head I will make their Authors that are not suspected by them to speak whose passages I will faithfully relate which they may see in the Originals if they will take the pains And as I hope that they will not lay to my charge what may appear to be too vehement in their Expressions so also I not do pretend to impute to the Prelats of these days that which those Authors censured in those of the former Times then on the work of Jesus Christ Their Bodies are adorned with Gold and their Souls defiled with filth they are ashamed to meddle with Spiritual things and their glory lies in their Scurrilous humor and carriage Whence it was that Catherine of
can't tell how to pass so favourable a Judgment Errors in Religion have a far different Character from those in Philosophy and in Religion it self those which always when they arrive vitiate the mind and heart are far more odious then those which do not deprave the mind and those which hinder all the saving Essicacy of the Gospel are infinitely more so how much more when they are gathered together to an exceeding great number and mutually uphold and sustain one another not unlike those black Clouds which in the most Stormy days of Winter joyn themselves one to another to make up but one general one and to deprive us of the light of the Sun Hitherto possibly they will not contest any thing But if it be reasonable enough that there should be no quarrel made about those general Propositions they ought not further to make any in this particular Question if the Actions of our Fathers were in their own nature good and just since we suppose not only that those things which they rejected and caused others to reject were Errors but also that they were Capital Errors of that last sort which I spoke of just before which one cannot look on without dread and amazement For it is upon that supposition that we defend our Fathers and if they dispute it with us they ought to quit this dispute about Forms and to enter upon a Discussion of the very Foundation it self They may alleadge that they had a long continued possession in favour of those things which our Reformers opposed since they were found establisht in the Church many Ages ago and that as in a Civil Society the Laws forbid those to be molested who are in a long and Antient possession and to be bound to produce their first Title though at the same time it should be maintained that they are Usurpers So also our Fathers ought not to be heard any further against the Sentiments and Customes which the Times had in some sort consecrated and made venerable But this Answer will be of no Use to them for not to alleadge here That the greatest part of those Opinions and Practises were new enough as has been sufficiently Justified not to say that they had been publickly disputed and by consequence That that possession whereof they speak was not peaceable Who knows not that there can be nothing prescribed in matters of Faith and Worship against the True Religion since that Religion is of God in all its parts and that there is neither any Time nor Custom nor possession that can make a true thing of a false or a Divine institution of a humane Tradition or any Vertue of a Vice In a Civil Society Laws Establish Prescriptions with very good Reason because without them the peace of the Community which is the only end that those Laws propound to themselves cannot be well preserved But in a Religious Society the principal end is the Glory of God and Salvation of the Faithful which are two things that are established on certain Perpetual and Invariable Foundations and by consequence have no respect to any long prepossessions on the contrary side how Antient soever they may have been If Religion were capable of any such Prescriptions Christianity would be bound to let Paganism alone for how long time past has Paganism been seated in the Possession of the Faith of men Saint Paul himself acknowledges it in those very places wherein he exhorts such to be Converted Turn you says he from these Vanities unto the living God who made Heaven and Earth who in Times past suffered all Nations to walk in their own ways and elsewhere God having winked at the Times of Ignorance commands now all men every where to Repent They cannot therefore bring any thing of Prescription against us and it will always remain certain that if that which our Fathers have said concerning the Corruption of the Latin Church in their days be true as we suppose it to be the Reformation was an Action good and just in it self and by Consequence in that respect they can have nothing to say against their Call to it But as it is not enough to establish a Lawful Call to suppose that what is done is good in it self and as it is further necessary that the person that does it should have right to do it it remains yet to be further inquired into whether our Fathers had power to do what they did For how many Actions are there that are just in themselves which it does not belong to all the World to do and which then become unjust and ill when every one thrusts himself in of his own Authority without being lawfully called It is not permitted for Example to all the World to punish the wicked although that punishment might be just it is not permitted to all men to change publick Customs although those changes should be good and advantageous to the Society We ought then to see what Call our Fathers had to Reform themselves and others But this Question would be easily decided if it be considered that in all Societies there are two sorts of Common Actions the one fort of those that are so Common as to belong to all the Body taken Collective as they speak in the School and not to each particular person So in a Parliament to pronounce a Sentance to absolve a man or to condemn him they are the Actions of the whole Body and not of each of those who compose it so to declare War and to make peace are the Acts of him or those who hold all the Rights of the State in their hands But there are other Actions which are so Common in a Society as to belong to each particular person or as they say to all Distributive and not to all Collective So to give ones advice in an Assembly is the Act not of the whole Body but of each particular person who composes it and to live in a Kingdom to contract Alliances to possess one's goods to labour to defend one's self against the incommodities of Life are Actions so Common as to belong to all particular Persons And so the Civilians have very well distinguished in saying that there are some Acts which respect Omnes ut singulos and that there are others which belong ad Omnes ut universos To Apply that Distinction only to our present Subject I say that in Religious Society which is the Church Faith Piety Holiness and by Consequence the Rejecting of Errors of false Worship and of Sins are those common Actions that belong to all private men The Just Lives by his Faith says the Scripture and as it would be ridiculous to demand of any man in a Civil Society what Personal Call he had to live to labour to avoid that which would be hurtful to his Life and to have a care of his own preservation so it is also an Absurdity to demand of our Fathers what call they had to believe aright in
Body of the Church to which those words of Isaiah might be generally applied From the Crown of the head to the sole of the foot there was no soundness in her But if any would have us yet further Examine the other Circumstances they will find that they all concur to establish that Call whereof we Treat I rank in this place all those extraordinary Qualities wherewith it pleased God to inrich those among our Fathers who contributed most of all to the work of the Reformation Who may not perceive in them a lively and penetrating understanding a solid Judgment an exquisite and profound knowledge an indefatigable propension to Labour a wonderful readiness to compose and to deliver an exceeding exact study of the Scripture and the Principles of the Christian Religion a great and resolute Soul an unshaken courage an upright Conscience a sincere love of the Truth an ardent zeal for the Glory of God a solid Piety without Hypocrisie and without Pride a plain and open Carriage an intire disengagement from the things of the World an admirable confidence in God and in his Providence a Cordial Friendship to all good men and the greatest aversion to the Vices Prophanation and Sophistry of others These were the Gifts and Talents wherewith the Divine Favour Honoured the greatest part of them there yet remains the liveliest Characters of them in their Writings and they were as the Seal wherewith God would confirm their Call For when his Wisdom designs persons to any great work it is wont to bestow on them those necessary qualifications to acquit themselves in it and we may say without fear of being charged with derogating from the Truth by those who know History that from the Sixth Age until that of our Fathers that is to say for the space of more then nine hundred Years there could not be found any space of Time so fertile in great men as that of the Reformation was which shews that God had a design to make use of them for that Work as the event has justified Add to all that The Ardent and almost Universal desire among the People to see a good Reformation spring up in the Church for even that is a yet further Seal to the Call of the Reformers in as much as it is a Testimony that God had markt out that Age wherein to purge his floor as the Scripture speaks Who knows not that that desire was such as neither the Artifices nor the Violences nor the Calumnies wherewith they laboured to darken the Reformation could wholly put a stop to The Church was left in Ignorance and in Superstition she panted after the Light of the Gospel which had been for so long a Time hid under a dark vail and that general Disposition wherein she was may let us see that the Time of her Deliverance was come But lastly is it not true that then the greatest part of those who laboured in that Reformation were Ecclesiastical persons whom the Duty of their place obliged more particularly then others to root out Errors from the minds of men to purify Religion and to endeavour that God should be worshipped according to his Will Every one knows that Luther and Zuinglius who appeared the first in that Great Work were not only Priests but ordinary Preachers also the one at Wittenburg and the other at Zurich and that the former was Professour in Divinity And they are not ignorant that those who joyned themselves to them to advance that design were also in Publick Offices in the Church as the whole University of Wittenburg a very great Number of Priests and other Church-men with Bishops and Arch-Bishops in Germany in Swedeland and in Denmark and some even in France and the whole Body of Bishops in England They will say it may be that the Pope Excommunicated them all whence it follows that they had no more either any publick Call or lawful Ministry But that Answer would be fallacious For the Pope having Excommunicated them for nothing else but that business of the Reformation his Excommunication can be considered no otherwise then as null in this Cause without an Obligation to enter upon an Examination of the Validity of his Thunders in general In effect if they did their Duty if they obeyed their Call in Reforming themselves and in reforming their Flocks it ought not to be questioned that those Excommunications which they suffered for so good a Cause did not fall of right upon those who unjustly pronounced them and that not only what our Reformers had done before but also what they did afterward was well and lawfully done Who can deny that an Excommunication contrary to the Glory of God to the good of the Church and to the Salvation of men should not not be Null But if the Reformation was just and the Glory of God the good of the Church and the Salvation of the People called for it as we suppose they did in this Dispute they may very well see that the Thunders of Rome upon this Subject are unjust and by consequence of no consideration They ought not then to propound things so to us nor to deny the first Reformers to be publick persons who had a part in the Ministry of the Church and who for that Reason had a most strict Obligation to Labour in the Re-establishment of its Purity And to declare what we think those Excommunications of the Popes were so far from diminishing the Right and Call of the first Reformers that they did on the contrary confirm them the more and that for two Reasons The one in that they made them see more and more that they could hope for nothing on the part of Rome or the Bishops of its side from whence there arose an indispensable necessity on our Fathers to employ themselves in it and the other in that those pretended Excommunications furnisht them also with a just Subject of laying open more and more to the Eyes of the people the gross and fundamental Errors whose Protection the Popes took up with so great an Ardour To which I add That as much as the Popes and the Prelats of their party opposed themselves to the Reformation so much they lost of that Right which yet remained to them in that publick Ministry which they abused with so great Injustice and that very thing did but strengthen the Right of the other Party and render their Ministry more Publick and more Lawful For in those contests that divide a Body or a Society that which one of the parties loses by its ill Conduct is re-assembled together and reunited in the other But as it is only proper to our present purpose to Treat of the Call that our Fathers had to Reform themselves and to Labour to Reform others that is to say meerly to reject Errors and to excite others to do the same and not to go further to talk of their Right or Call to the publick Ministry We ought not to insist more upon this
they had abused the Conduct of the people in Teaching them those things which they had no proofs for Notwithstanding I see well that the Author of the Prejudices tells us how he understands we should be bound to believe things upon this frivolous Foundation that there may be some in the World able to prove them or that it may be there might be some to come hereafter to do it This is the Faith which he wishes that the Magistrates and People of Zurich would have had for the hindring their Reformation He would have had them imagined that although they should have seen nothing that should have perswaded the Worshipping of Images and that of Reliques the Sacrifice of the Mass and the other points that were in Controversy yet that they ought not to have ceased from believing them with a Divine Faith and to have devoutly practised them because there might have been possibly some men in the World ready enough to prove them or that if there were none then there might have some arose afterwards to have done it By this Principle the Jews and Heathens may yet at this day accuse all the Conversions of the first Christians of Rashness 10. Object The Calvinists cannot deny that their pretended Reformation was not established on the Spirit of Error and that the Burger-masters of Zurich were not perswaded of falshood since they immediately rejected divers things which Zuinglius had maintained there with as much obstinaecy as those points of Doctrine which they have yet common with him He laid down also some Propositions manifestly contrary to the Scripture without taking any pains to explain them Answ When the Author of the Prejudices will take the pains to consider well the sence of Zuinglius and ours he will find a perfect agreement Zuinglius denied the Intercession of the Saints we do no less in the sence wherein they understand the word Intercession in the Church of Rome to wit that the Saints intercede for us as True Mediators We deny not that the Saints pray in general for the Church a Prayer of Charity and Communion Zuinglius denied it no more then we Zuinglius denied that it was allowable to make Images for the use of Religion we deny it with him We believe that it is indifferent to make them for a Civil use Zuinglius never said the contrary Zuinglius said that the True way not to err was to cleave wholly to the Word of God we say so also He said that Jesus Christ alone was given us for the Pattern of our Life and not the Saints But he meant it of a first and perfect Pattern and so he explained himself when he added these words Capitis enim est nos deducere non Membrorum It belongs to the Head to guide us and not to the Members There is nothing in that contrary to the Scripture 11. Object Zuinglius to gain the Burgermasters to his side had the art to pick out certain vulgar Reasonings and very well sitted to the Vnderstandings of the Switzers he declaimed fiercely against the Popes who had forbidden the Priests Marriage he highly exaggerated the Rigidness of the Command of the Church which enjoyned Abstinence from Meats which he Attributed to the Popes only Answ Those Vulgar Reasonings were nevertheless very pertinent Reasons for they made them see that the Prelates had Usurped a Tyrannical Domination over their Consciences and that they Exercised it after the most Scandalous manner in the World enjoyning a Caelibacy that filled the Church with beastlinesses and impurities and forbidding the use of Meats on certain days which they abstained not from themselves For the rest those injurious Discourses against a whole Nation which had always a great deal of Vertue and Glory are not methinks within the Rules of Christian Charity nor even within those of Civil Honesty If the Switzers have not naturally as florid a wit as some other Nations have they have a Solid Right Judicious Laborious Constant Faithful Sincere mind which are Qualities far more estimable then those which usually accompany that which they call the Heat of Imagination 12. Object Zuinglius answered to a Reason of the Chancell ur of Zurich after a very False and Sophistical manner at the Foundation but proper enough to confound the understandings of the Switzers He accused the Chancellour of Ignorance in that he took he said these words The field us the World for a Parable whereas they were only an Explication of the Parable and not the Parable it self But the Chancellour would have said no more but this That these Words The seed is the Word of God could not be taken according to the Letter since they were the Explication of a Parable to which they had Reference therefore Zuinglius took great heed how he answered and he was forced to save himself by a trick in giving the words a change For there is no body who sees not that what the Chancellour said was indisputable and that those words The seed is the word of God being the Explication of a Parable could not be taken in the Letter but that it is as if Jesus Christ had said When I spake of the seed in this Parable I mean by that the Word of God But these words This is my Body being no Explication of any Parable and not being accompanied with any circumstances that should oblige us not to take them according to the Letter there is nothing more ridicul us then to compare them with the Expressions that explain Parables Answ This is no great subtilty from a man who talks of nothing but a gross and Suitz understanding As we ought not to take litterally those words which explain a Parable so we ought not to take litterally those words which explain a Sacrament For in this respect a Sacrament is as a Visible Parable since it is a Visible sign that represents an invisible Grace The Reason for which we ought not litterally to take those words that explain a parable is because we see the matter Treated of there is one thing that represents another and which by consequence cannot be that other thing Substantially and Really And the whole Reason for which we ought not to take literally the words that explain a Sacrament is because we see the matter Treated of there is one thing which signifies another and which by consequence cannot be that thing Substantially and Really So that these words This is my Body and those The seed is the Word of God are alike and if we ought not to take the latter litterally because they are the Explication of a Parable we ought not also to take the others litterally because they are the Explication of a Sacrament These are the principal Objections of the Tenth Chapter of the Book of Prejudices excepting one which is taken from the manner wherein they formed our first Assemblies at Paris at the beginning of the Reformation and the Election that they made there
have us that we should be with her For in respect of the Lutherans the business is only about a meer Toleration which we give to those among them who desire it with a Spirit of Charity waiting till it shall please God to dissipate their Error But the Church of Rome that calls it self infallible would have us not only to have a meer Toleration for her but that we should make a profession of believing all that she believes for when she separated her self from us she Anathematised all those who did not believe all that she had decided in her Council of Trent The Matters therefore are not equal between the Roman and the Lutheran Communion in respect of us To put them into an Equality it is necessary that the Roman Church should openly put her self into the state wherein the Lutherans are that she renounce the Invocation of Saints Religious worship of Images humane Satisfactions Indulgences Purgatory the worshipping of Relliques the publick Service in an unknown Tongue the merit of good Works Transubstantiation Adoration of the Sacrament the Sacrifice of the Mess the Papal Monarchy the pretension of Infallibility the blind Obedience that she would have us give to her decisions It is necessary that she should acknowledge the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith and manners that she should carefully recommend the Reading of them to the People that she should confess their sufficiency without the help of tradition that she should believe the Authority of that Scripture independent even in respect of us on that of the Church that she should distinctly lay down the Doctrine of Justification and that of the distinction of the Law and the Gospel that she should form a Just Idea of the Faith and of good works and that she should take care to abolish all the popular Superstitions which we behold among them When she shall have done all that with some other things which the Lutherans have done also although she do retain the point of the Real presence after the same manner that they do we shall not fail to offer her the same Toleration which we yield to the Lutherans and the same conditions which we give to them which is that we should not engage our selves to believe that presence that we should always protest against it as an Error and that they shall do nothing to force us to embrace it When the Church of Rome shall be in that condition which I have set down if we do not make her these offers if we do not even make them with all the ardour imaginable we will be very well contented in that Case that they should accuse us of humane Policy and that they should tell us that we are a sort of men without any Conscience Justice and Charity But 'till then we will take God and men to witness that there is not the least equity in those invectives and that it is to oppress our innocency to ascribe that as the Author of the Prejudices has done to an interested Policy or a capricious humour which is but too well founded upon the things themselves See here what I had to say upon the Twelfth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices It may now be Judged of what force his Accusations are We should after that pass on to his Thirteenth Chapter But as that Chapter is but a sending us to a Book of Monsieur Arnaud's Intituled The Overthrow of the Morals of Jesus Christ by the Calvinists I shall also content my self with referring my Readers to the Answer which I hope to make him It shall suffice for the present to say That the Doctrine of the Saints Perseverance as the Synod of Dort has laid it down is a Doctrine of the Scripture and that all the pretended Consequences which Monsieur Arnaud would draw from it are of the same nature of those which profane Persons draw from all the Doctrines of Religion when they would abuse them to their Ruin CHAP. VIII That our Fathers in their Design of Reforming themselves were bound to take the Holy Scripture alone for the Rule of their Faith IT it now necessary to Examine by what Principle or upon what Rule our Fathers proceeded in their Reformation But before we go any further we shall do well to weigh what the Author of the Prejudices says who has made an express Chapter upon this matter The Argument of that Chapter is framed in these words That the way which the Calvinists propound to instruct men in the Truth is ridiculous and impossible After having entred upon his subject As the matter is saith he about the promise which they make of discovering divers Truths of the Faith to the Catholicks which are in their Judgments obscured and quite altered in the Church of Rome there will be nothing more Just or more natural then in the first place to inquire into the way which they would take to perform it to the end that we may Judge by the very nature of that way what we may justly expect For if it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way and which could not come to an issue there could not be a more lawful excuse to hinder us from hearkening to them nor a more evident conviction of the rashness of their enterprise Behold here methinks Two Declarations of that Author sufficiently express concerning the means which we propound to instruct men in the Truth the one That it is a ridiculous and impossible way and the other That it is an infinite way c. and which can come to no issue for we may well perceive that that Periphrasis of expression If it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way c. made use of in the beginning of a Disputation means that it will be so found in effect and that it is as much as if it had been positively said they would engage us in an infinite way and which has no end there being no other difference between those two expressions unless that this latter is the more plain and that the other has more of the Air of the Philosophical Method of those Gentlemen After that preamble the Author goes on It is true says he that if we will hear them speak upon this subject without any more deep searehing into that which they say we shall have reason enough to be satisfied For they baldly promise to lead us to the Faith by a short an easy and a clear way without confusion without danger of wandring aside and this way say they is the Examination of the Articles of the Faith by the Scripture which is the only Rule that God has given us for the deciding of the differences of Religion and assuring us of what we ought to believe all others being subject to Error This is the Explication of the way which we propose which is to take the Holy Scripture for the only Rule of our Faith He adds But because in a
fitted to all the World are sufficient to Salvation The Author of the Prejudices may chuse therefore whensoever it shall please him other Propositions to exaggerate the pretended difficulties of the Scripture But what choice soever he should make and what side soever he should take it is certain that those unconquerable difficulties which according to him render the way of the Scripture ridiculous and impossible to the simpler sort are nothing else but the Visions and Dreams of Fancy which admits or would create changes and that he can say nothing more vain and chimerical then that which he has displayed in the 14th and 15th Chapters This is what will manifestly appear if we consider that the Scripture is the Rule of Faith two ways for it is so either to form the Faith to a degree of perfection and compleatness as much as a Man is capable of it in this Life or to form it to a degree of meer sufficiency for Salvation In the former respect it is the Rule of Faith not only for the things which it clearly contains but generally for all that which it contains whether in express Terms or in equivalent whether by near consequences or remote in a word after what manner soever it be In the Second it is the Rule of Faith meerly for the things that are Essential to Religion which it clearly contains and after a manner fitted to the understanding of all the World To make a Just and Right use in the former respect I confess that we must necessarily go over a great many Obstacles and conquer a great many difficulties We must weigh the words exactly examine the Stile consider the Reasons compare it with like expressions consider the passages that seem contrary to it penetrate into the true sence of ambiguous and obscure places look to the connexions of the Discourse to the matter treated of and to the end and design of him who speaks To this effect it is necessary to know how to distinguish the Apocryphal Books from the Canonical to understand the Original Tongues to Judge of the Translations by and even to consult Interpreters All that requires without doubt a great deal of care earnest application a great deal of study and it is very true that to acquit ones self well of it the whole life of a man is not too long I shall even say that it is too short and that humane abilities are too weak to exhaust the Scripture which is an infinite depth of Mysteries and Heavenly Truths and therefore it is that the Author of the Preface to the New Testament of Mons has very well said that we may always lose our selves in the abysses of Learning and Wisdom which we adore without being able to comprehend Notwithstanding it is our duty to advance in that knowledge as far as we can and it would be but a very bad reason for dispensation in that Case to alledge the lengths and difficulties of it for however we cannot attain to an intire perfection yet we may notwithstanding make a considerable progress and the more a man advances in that study the more Joy and Comfort he has But as to the Second way in which the Scripture is the Rule of the Faith to wit to form the Faith in a degree of meer sufficiency for Salvation through the Essential things which it clearly contains in this regard I say its use is freed from all those lengths and all those difficulties and accomodated to the capacity of the meanest requiring nothing else but good sence and a good Conscience which God gives to the smallest of his Children First There is no necessity for that that a man should study the Question of the Apocryphal and Canonical Books for that discussion which is necessary when they would penetrate into the abstruse things of the Scripture which may be drawn from it by 〈◊〉 consequences or by a narrow Examination of its terms and the structure of the discourse because those particular things do not carry so sensible a Character of their Divinity with them as the rest That Discussion I say which is necessary in that Case is not so when they restrain themselves as the simpler sort do to the essential things which the Scripture clearly Teaches because those things make themselves sensibly to be owned to be Divine and by consequence Canonical which is sufficient for the certainty of their Faith if they remain in that Degree Secondly They have no need either to consult the Original Tongues or the different ways of Reading because that those exact Observations which are necessary when we would make use of the Scripture in the first Degree are not so when they would in the Second Imperfect Translations sufficiently contain those clear things that make up the Essence of Religion and the different ways of Reading do not make any difference Those things are neither in one only passage nor in one only Book they are so abundantly spread over the whole body of the Scripture that the faults of Translators or varieties of Manuscripts cannot hinder us from finding them there And if sometimes it happens that the boldness and unfaithfulness of a Translator should go so far as on set purpose to falsify any place of Scripture as Veron has done not long since in reference to a passage in the Acts which says that the Apostles served the Lord and which Veron has Translated that they said Mass in the Lord or as the Authors of the Translation of Mons have done who have inserted into that same passage that the Apostles Sacrificed to the Lord and another in the Epistle to Philemon wherein Saint Paul says that he trusted to be given to the faithful through their Prayers where they have Translated it that he trusted he should be given to them through the merit of their Prayers when that I say should fall out there would be found enough persons in the Church who would not fail to advertise the people of such unfaithfulness that they might take heed of them Lastly I say That it is not necessary that the simpler sort should consult the interpreters of the Scripture to assure themselves of its true meaning for the Objects of their Faith are so clearly explained there they are laid down in so many places they are so well connected with one another they are there in such a manner that provides so well for all that is necessary for the instruction of the mind for the consolation of the conscience and the Sanctification of the Soul that with the Grace of God which accompanies them in his Elect they have no need of any thing but their meer view to insinuate and enter into their hearts and to form therein a True Faith To dissipate in a few words all that the Authour of the Prejudices has set down in his 14th and 15th Chapters I shall only tell him that he can require but these four conditions in the Objects of Faith to render them
Transubstantiation the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Adoration of the Host And that which is yet further considerable is That as the Essential Truths of Religion are so linked with one another that there is not any one that may not be as I may so speak the Center of all the rest that is to say which may not have references to all the rest and immediate connexions and which all the others may not serve to prove and uphold which makes out divers ways or manners of establishing them in the minds of the most simple even so those Errors that are destructive are so repugnant to those Truths that there is not any one which may not be opposed not only by all in general but even almost by each one in particular which shews that there are divers ways of overthrowing them and destroying them in the minds of the weakest and when they shall escape one of those ways they will be sufficiently overthrown by another For Example Transubstantiation which is repugnant to the sincerity of God is also repugnant to the Truth of the humane nature of Jesus Christ to the formation of his Body of the substance of the B. Virgin to the state of that Glory wherein he is at present to the Article of his Ascension and of his existence in Heaven to the manner in which he dwells in us which is by his Spirit and by our Faith to the nature of that hunger and thirst which we should have for his flesh and for his blood which is Spiritual to the Character of both the Sacraments wherein there never is any Transubstantiation made and to the perpetual Order that God observed when he wrought Miracles which was to lay them open to mens Eyes and Sences so that when a man should not be capable of perceiving any of those repugnances he would perceive the others which would produce the same effect and which would be sufficient to make him reject those Errors See here then all the Conditions that are necessary for the forming of a True Faith even in the Souls of the most simple behold them found in the Scripture and by consequence behold the Scripture remaining the Rule of Faith in spight of all the endeavours of the Author of the Prejudices It is in vain that he so strongly opposes it it will always be what God has made it that is to say the Fountain and only source of the Truth of Religion or as St. Irenaeus speaks the Foundation and Pillar of our Faith which only can give us quiet of mind and peace of Conscience The Difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices forms against the Scripture have these Three Characters The one That they may be turned against himself that is to say that as he has made them upon the subject of the Scripture We may also make them upon the subject of Tradition and the Church of Rome to which he would send us back the other That in regard of the Scripture they are null and to no purpose and the Third That in regard of Tradition and the Roman Church they are solid and unconquerable and this is what will appear if what I have said in this and in the foregoing Chapter be well Examined The End of the Second Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE THIRD PART Of the Obligation and Necessity that lay upon our Fathers to separate themselves from the Church of Rome CHAP. I. That our Fathers had just sufficient and necessary Causes for their Separation supposing that they had right at the bottom in the controverted Points WE should certainly be the most ungrateful persons in the World if after the favour that God has shewn us in re-establishing the Purity of his Gospel in the midst of us we should not think our selves bound to give him everlasting Thanks So great and precious an advantage highly calls for our resentments and that in enjoying it with delight we should pay our Acknowledgements to the Author of it But what ground soever we should have to rejoyce in God we must notwithstanding avow that we should be very insensible in regard of others if we could behold without an extream affliction the misery of so many men who voluntarily deprive themselves of that good Those who are at present engaged in those Errors and Superstitions from which it has pleased the Divine Goodness to deliver us are our Brethren by the External Profession of the Christian Name and by the Consecration of one and the same Baptism and how can we intirely rejoyce while we see them in a state which we believe to be so bad and so contrary to our common Calling I know that God only who is the Lord of mens hearts and minds can dissipate that gloomy darkness which they are involved in and that it is our Duty to pour out our ardent and continual Prayers to him for his Grace for them but we ought not to neglect humane methods among which that of justifying the Conduct of our Fathers in the subject of their Separation is one of the most efficacious and as it is by that especially that they labour to render us odious so is to that that I shall allow the sequel of this Work The Separation of our Fathers ought to be distinguish'd into three Degrees the First consists in that which they have loudly pronounc'd against the Doctrines and Customs of the Church of Rome which they judg'd to be contrary to Faith and Piety and which they have formally renounced the Second consists in this that they have forsook the External Communion of that Church and those of its party and the Third in that they have made other Assemblies than hers and that they have rank't themselves under another Form of Ministry We have treated of the First already where we have shewn the Justice and Necessity of the Reformation which our Fathers made the Third shall be spoken to in the Fourth Part and this is designed to examine the Second Our Inquiry therefore at present will be to know whether our Fathers in Reforming themselves ought to have separated themselves from the other Party who were not for a Reformation or whether notwithstanding the Reformation they ought yet to have abode with them in one and the same Communion and to have liv'd in that respect as they did heretofore This is that which I pretend to make clear in this Third Part of this Work To enter upon this business I confess that if we could suppose it as a certainty That all Separation in matters of Religion is odious and Criminal we ought to be the first in condemning the Actions of our Fathers and that whatever aversion we should have for the Errors and Abuses which we see reigning in the Church of Rome we ought to labour to bear them as patiently as it could be possible for us to do in waiting till it should please God
Councils of Ariminum and of Constantinople which included all the East and all the West and if they had had no more but that they ought not to have separated from the body of their actually governing Pastors that they might have cleaved to a Synod which was past and gone It was therefore the importance of the Truth that was contested and that of the Error that was opposite to it which made the Separation and not the meer Authority of the Nicene Fathers and therefore it is that S. Augustine disputing against Maximinus an Arian would that they should set aside as well the Council of Nice as that of Ariminum and that they should only contend about the things themselves Not but that sometimes the Orthodox did set before them the Council of Nice according to the manner of disputes where one will neglect no advantage for its being ever so small but it was as a little help and not as the essential reason of their Separation which was alwayes taken from the thing it self and from the testimonies of the Scripture so that that difference is very frivolous If they say lastly that the point that was controverted then was one of a far greater importance than those upon which our Fathers separated themselves I answer that indeed the Article of the Consubstantiality of the Son is one of the chief and most fundamental Articles of the Christian Religion but that does not hinder that those that are controverted between the Church of Rome and us should not also be of the greatest importance to salvation and sufficient to cause a separation And when they would make the justice or injustice of ours to depend on that they must quit all that vain dispute of prejudices and go on to the discussion of the foundation it self The Author of the Prejudices must not take it ill that in endeavouring to decide the Question concerning the right of the Separation of our Fathers I make use here of his own proper testimony For it is a matter surprising enough that writing in his Eighth and Ninth Chapters in which he would he sayes convince us of Schism without entring upon a discussion either of our Doctrine or our Mission that he should not have remembred what he himself had just before said in the Seventh First of all he there proposes this difficulty as on our side If the visible Church were really fallen into Error as we suppose that it is possible for it to do if it drive away the truly faithful from its bosome if it persecute them must those truly faithful needs be deprived of all external worship in Religion must they needs cleave to the Church to perish with them since we suppose that it resides in them alone Is it not against the Divine Providence that the true worshippers of God the true heirs of Heaven cannot form a Church in the World and that God has not left any means to provide against so strange an inconvenience He answers plainly That indeed that inconvenience is exceeding great but that it is not necessary that God should have provided against it by remedies because he has resolved to hinder it from ever falling out in alwayes preserving the True Ministry in his Church So that it can never be in a necessity of being re-established and that very thing is a certain mark that that inconvenience can never happen in that God has not provided any remedy for it He sayes that so it is that our Ministers ought to conclude and not to conclude as they do in supposing that the visible Church may fall into ruine that there is a necessity of having recourse to the establishment of a new Ministry Since immediately after he adds But if the adhaesion which they have to their sentiments hinders them from coming to agree to this consequence they ought rather to conclude that those pretended truly faithful must remain in that state without Pastors and without any external worship and that they should rather expect that God should raise up some extraordinarily and with visible marks of their mission than to usurp to themselves a right of creating Ministers and Pastors and giving them power to govern the Churches and administer the Sacraments We have already shewn him and we shall yet further shew him in the end that it is not without reason that we suppose that the Ministry may be corrupted in the Church We shall shew him also that the consequence which we draw from it concerning the re-establishing of the Ministry is just and right and that a faithful people have a right in that case to create their Ministers and their Pastors and to give them power to govern their Churches and to administer the Sacraments But as we are only disputing at present about knowing whether we may separate our selves from the body of the ordinary Pastors when they are fallen into errors incompatible with our salvation and when they will force the people to profess the same Errors it shall suffice at present to take notice that the Author of the Prejudices comes to agree that when persons are perswaded that the body of those who possess the Ministry in the Church is fallen into Error and when it drives away from its bosome and persecutes those who maintain the Truth they may remain separated without acknowledging that Body for their Pastors and without assisting in their external worship provided that they do not make other Ministers But who sees not that this is precisely to acknowledge the right of that Separation about which the question at present is Who sees not that it is at least in that respect a discharging our Fathers from the Accusation of Schism and to declare them further innocent of that crime which he would design to lay to their charge at last Our Fathers did not collect that consequence of the Author of the Prejudices they did not conclude that the Ministry must be incorruptible in the Church in that which it had of humane in it This is not a place to dispute whether they adhered too much to their own opinions where because that in effect they judg'd well that manner of reasoning is pernicious Howsoever it were they have concluded quite otherwise they were perswaded that the body of those who possessed the Ordinary Ministry in the Latin Church were fallen not only into an Error but into many and into such as were contrary to mens salvation that it was guilty of opinionativeness in maintaining them that it did impose a necessity upon all to profess them that it drove away from its bosome those who refused that obedience It was upon this that they separated themselves from them not acknowledging them any more for their Pastors and assisting no further in their external worship Thus far the Author of the Prejudices does not condemn them he would only that they should have remained throughout without Pastors and without external worship We shall see in its place whether
that every Society which has not that extension is not the Church so that this reasoning is alwayes sound your Society is shut up in a little part of the world Therefore it is not the Church and that it is by this Principle that S. Augustine has disputed against the Donatists and convinced them of Schism This is the summ of his eighth Chapter In the ninth he labours to apply these general Maxims to our Separation and 1. He sayes That our Communion is not spread over all the world any more than that of the Donatists and that not having that visible extension which is the perpetual mark of the True Church it follows that it is not so and by consequence that we are all Schismaticks 2. He sayes We carry the principle of the Donatists much higher than those Schismaticks stretch'd it for as for them they did not say that there ever was a time in which the Church had wholly fell into Apostasic and that they excepted the Communion of Donatus but as for us we will have it that there has been whole Ages in which all the world had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation 3. He labours to shew that the Societies of the Berengarians of the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in whom he sayes we shut up the Church could not be this Catholick Church of which S. Augustine speaks And lastly He concludes from thence that we are Schismaticks and by consequence out of a state of salvation Before we enter upon the particular Examination of the Propositions whereof this Objection is made up it will be good to note that there is nothing new in all that and that it is nothing but that some mark of visible extension that the greatest part of the Controversial Writers of the Roman Communion have been wont to propound when they would give the marks of the True Church There is this only difference to be found in it that the others labour to ground this upon what they produce out of the passages of the Scripture whereas the Author of the Prejudices grounds his argument upon the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers But when it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers disputing against the Donatists should have prest this visible extension of the Church too much and urged it further than they ought will the Author of the Prejudices believe that he ought to hold all those things that the Fathers have advanc'd in their disputes for infallible and all their reasonings and hypotheses to have been so Does he not know what Theodoret himself who was a Father has noted concerning some of those who were before him That the vehemence of Disputation had made them fall into excesses just as those who would rectifie a crooked Tree turn it too much on the other side from that straightness which it ought to have And is he ignorant of what S. Athanasius said concerning Dionysius of Alexandria whose Authority the Arians objected to him That Dionysius had said so not with design to make a simple exposition of his faith but occasionally having a respect to the times and persons That a Gardiner is not to be found fault with if he cultivate his Trees according to the quality of the soil sowing one planting another pruning this and plucking up that We must sayes S. Jerome distinguish between the different kinds of writing and especially of Polemical and Dogmatical For in the Polemical the dispute is vagous and when they answer to an adversary they propound sometimes one thing and sometimes another they argue as they think fit they say one thing and do another or as the Proverb sayes they offer bread and give one a stone But in the Dogmatical on the contrary they speak openly and ingenuously We may easily apprehend by that that we ought not to hold for Canonical all that the Fathers may have wrote in the heat of their disputes or to take what they have said according to the rigour of the Letter since they themselves acknowledge that having the Pen in their hands they often advance things that on other occasions ought not to be press'd So that though it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers had made that visible extension an inseparable and perpetual mark of the True Church yet we should not fear to say in respect of them what S. Augustine himself has said concerning S. Cyprian whom the Donatists objected to him I do not hold the Writings of Cyprian for Canonical but I examine them by the Canonical Scriptures That which I find in them conformable to the holy Scriptures I receive with praising him and I reject with the respect that I owe to his person what I find in them disagreeing thereto We should make no scruple to apply to them what the same S. Augustine has said on the subject of S. Hilary and some other Fathers whom they alledg'd to him We must throughly distinguish these sorts of writings from the Authority of the Canonical Books For however we should read them yet we cannot draw convincing testimonies from them and it is allow'd us to depart from them when we see that they themselves have departed from the truth It is therefore certain that the Author of the Prejudices has but weakned his proof when instead of labouring to establish it on the Scripture as the rest have done he restrains it to the meer Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers We have thought that we ought to have freely represented this to the Author of the Prejudices to oblige him a little to moderate his pretensions for he imagin'd that the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers was enough to convince us I will sayes he convince them we have frequently told him already and shall tell him here again That the Scripture is the only rule of our Faith that we do not acknowledge any other authority able to decide the disputed Points in Religion than that of the Word of God and that if we sometimes dispute by the Fathers it is but by way of condescention to those of the Church of Rome to act upon their own principle and not to submit our consciences to the word of men But because that he may also imagine under a pretence of this declaration that we have no other way to answer his argument I shall undertake to answer here and shew him if I can that he has abused the Authority of S. Augustine and that he has neither comprised or had a mind to comprehend either the true sentiments of that Father or ours This is that which I design to shew him in this Chapter and in the following But before we enter upon this matter it will be necessary to clear in a few words the History of the Donatists and to represent what was the beginning of their quarrel and what their Separation was The Author of the
not God his Prophets and his Altars yet among them Lord said Elias they have killed thy Prophets and thrown down thy Altars And the hundred Prophets of God that Obadiah hid in two Caves to withdraw them from the persecution of the Idolatress Jezabel the Altar of God that Elias repaired in Carmel to sacrifice there by the miraculous fire that fell down from Heaven to consume the victim the calling of Elisha and Micaiah and in a word the whole History of those schismatical Ten Tribes does it not evidently note that God looked on them as his true Church in which there was yet a means to be saved We must not therefore abuse that which the Fathers have wrote against Schismaticks in intending to aggravate their crime and to draw them from it nor must we take their expressions in the whole rigour of the letter Their meaning is not that all those generally who are found engaged in a Schismatical Communion even down to Tradesmen and Labourers who remain there with an upright heart and through the prejudice of their consciences are out of the Church and eternally damned but that the Authors and Defenders of Schism who run into it through their personal interests or out of a spirit of fierceness pride and an hatred incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ commit a horrible crime and that while they are in that state they remain deprived of all hopes of salvation That if the Fathers have said any thing more generally and which cannot be thus restrained it is just to understand it in a comparative sense that is to say that setting that Schismatical party of the Church in opposition to that which is not so the hope of salvation appears evidently in this which it does not in the other where it is obscured by that Schism The End of the Third Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FOURTH PART Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHAP. I. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the supposition that they were right in the Foundation THE Order of the Matters of this Treatise requires that we now go on to that Separation which the Author of the Prejudices calls Positive and that after having confirmed the Right that our Fathers had to Examine the State of Religion and the Church in their days after our having shewed the indispensable necessity that lay upon them to forsake the Assemblies of the Church of Rome and to live apart from her Communion that we also establish the Right that they had to set up a Christian Society among themselves notwithstanding their going off from the other Party who were not for a Reformation and to make up alone and apart a Body of the Church or an External and visible Communion This is that which I pretend to establish in this Fourth and last Part and to that end I shall here Treat of two things The first shall respect the Right of those Publick Assemblies and the Second shall be concerning that of the Gospel Ministry wherein our Function lies Howsoever these two things have a dependance one upon another it will yet be well to Treat of them with some distinction To make the First clear I shall first lay it down as an indisputable Truth That the Right of Religious Assemblies naturally follows that of Societies I mean That as far as a Religious Society is Just and Lawful so far the Assemblies that are therein made are Just and Lawful and that on the contrary as far as a Society is unjust and wicked so far its Assemblies are so too This Principle is evident to common sence and it is for that Reason that we condemn the Assemblies of the Heathens Jews and Mahometans as Unlawful and Criminal because their Societies are impious and wicked and that having no right to be united to believe and practice those Errors which they believe and practice they have also no right to Assemble themselves together in order to make a Publick Profession It is for the same Reason that we hold on the contrary the Christian Assemblies to be not only Just and Allowable but to be necessary and commanded by Divine Right because the Christian Society that is to say the Church is it self also of Divine Right It is then True that the Right of Assemblies follows that of Societies But we must further suppose as another evident and certain Truth That our Fathers before the Reformation were Latin Christians living in the Communion of the Latin Church in which they made as considerable a party as the rest of the Latins and that from Father to Son throughout a long succession Time out of mind they enjoyed with the others the rights of that Society That they were equally in possession of it with the other common Assemblies of that Religion having a part in the Ministry in the Churches in the Sacraments in the publick Prayers in the Reading and Preaching of the Word and that as far as the communion of the Latin Church was lawful so far the part that our Fathers had in it was lawful also That it was not a company of Strangers or unknown persons come from the utmost parts of America or the Southern Lands nor a sort of People dropt down from the Clouds who were newly joyned together with them in the same Society but Persons and whole Families setled a long time ago who were joyned together with them in the Profession of the Christian Religion many Ages before and who by consequence were in possession of the Rights of that Society Although had they been Strangers Americans and Barbarians on whom God should have suddenly bestowed the Favour of Calling them to the True Faith and the True Holiness of Christanity yet we could believe that by that thing alone they would have been invested in all the Rights of that Society as much as if they had had it by a long possession time out of mind But howsoever it be they were Christians from Father to Son and neither their blood nor their birth did distinguish them from the others We are now concerned only to search out whether that which hapned to our Fathers that is to say their Reformation their Condemnation by the Popes and by their Council of Trent and their Separation from the Church of Rome can be able to spoil them of all their Rights For if it be True that they were fallen off either by their own ill Carriage or by the meer Authority of the Church of Rome we must yield that our Assemblies are Unlawful and Criminal but if on the contrary they were not so fallen off if that which hapned to them did nothing else but confirm their Right and render it more pure more just and more indisputable they ought also
but I deny that the Consequences which the Author of the Prejudices pretends to draw from them are True We shall see in the sequel whether the Society of the Protestants separated from those of the Church of Rome may with any reason be called a new Church We shall see also what Right they had to a Gospel-Ministry and whether they can say that their Ministry is new I consider only that Principle which he propounds which is That when the Faithful separate themselves Negatively from those with whom they were before united they ought not to set up a Society apart For he knows not how to say any thing that is more contrary to Piety and the Spirit of Christianity I hold then that if that Negative Separation of the Faithful be Just if it be necessary if they made it out of a good Conscience not only they can but they ought to hold a Christian Society among themselves to make a Visible Body to Assemble to pray to God together to Read his Word to consult and deliberate for their common Interests even while they should be separated from the greater number of the Ordinary Pastors or even when they should have no Pastors among them I mean that that is not only a Right but a Duty an Obligation and such an Obligation that there is nothing can dispence with but an absolute and invincible impossibility The Reason upon which I found this Proposition is taken from the very Nature of the Christian Faith Piety and Charity For when God has given us these vertues he has by that very thing indispensably bound us to keep and strengthen them and by consequence he has bound us to practise those means which he himself has established for that purpose But among those means That of External Communion with our Brethren to whom he has given the same grace is one of the most considerable as I have said before Therefore Saint Paul told the believing Hebrews Let us take heed to stir up one another to Charity and good works not forsaking the Assembling of our selves together but admonishing one another And to the Colossians Let the word of Jesus Christ dwell richly in you in all wisdom Teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs And to the Thessalonians We entreat that you would admonish the disorderly that you comfort those that are in affliction that you uphold the weak And to the Ephesians Speake ye one to another in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Moreover according as our Brethren labour on their part in the preservation and confirmation of our Faith Piety Hope and Charity by the Society that we hold with them so we produce the same effect in respect of them for we mutually edify one another But it is further a Duty to which Christianity engages us God would not that we should only labour for our own preservation he would have us also take care of that of our neighbours and it would be a detestable word in the mouth of a Christian if he should say with Cain Am I my Brothers keeper We are further bound to propagate our Faith and Piety in the Souls of our Children and to labour even to the utmost of our power to make it spring up in the Souls of Infidels as one lighted candle may light another which evidently notes that the Instinct of Christianity is an instinct of Society that carries us out not only to own our Brethren when they are so but to gain more then we had before and even those which we cannot have In fine Piety would have us give God the highest honour and Worship that it is possible for us to give him But it is certain that God is more honoured in a Society when all in one Body offer up their Prayers to him their vows and their praises then when each does it apart more hearts united together pay God a homage more worthy of his Majesty They cannot then imagine a State more contrary to the nature of the true Faith of Christian Piety and Charity than that of Dispersion nor by consequence any thing that the Faithful ought to have more horror for and when the misery of the Age shall cast them into it by an unavoidable necessity they ought always to preserve a Spirit of Society and to pant after the company of their Brethren My Soul said David then when he was in that Condition Thirsteth after God after the living and true God O when shall I come and appear before the presence of God! My Tears have been my meat Day and Night while they say unto me Where is now thy God I remember the Time wherein I went with the multitude and when I went sweetly in company with others with the voice of Triumph and praise unto the House of God It is so certain that the Actual dispersion of the Faithful does not break the natural bond of their Society for they are always Brethren Children of the same Family it can only suspend the Acts of it and when that absolute necessity which forced them into dispersion is gone they return of themselves naturally into an actual Society by the force of that Unity of Faith and Religion that is among them without any necessity of a new Convocation It will signify nothing to say that the Duties which I have noted respect the Faithful only then when they are already in an Actual Society but that they are not bound to remain there nor to enter into it when they have no Pastors to Assemble them For I say that those Duties arise not from the nature of that Society but from that of Faith Piety and Charity and by consequence they bind them to preserve an actual Society where-ever it is and even to make one where it is not yet that is to say they oblige us to United all those to us in whom we see the same Faith Piety and Charity shine forth that we perceive in our selves In a word since Faith Piety Charity and the other Christian Vertues bind us to those Duties they bind us also to an External Society without which they cannot be performed whence it comes to pass that the Faithful are called in the Scripture Sheep not in respect of their Ordinary Pastors but in respect of their Faith in Jesus Christ to note That it is the Faith and not the Ministry which makes the Society and which renders by consequence their Assemblies lawful and necessary CHAP. II. That the Society of the Protestants is not a New Church ONe of the most Ordinary and powerful means that they make use of to render us odious to the People and to drive them from our Communion is to represent us to them as Innovators and full of Confusions who have overthrown all and made a new Religion and a new Church and it is very true that the greatest part of the World
had a Plenitude a fulness of Power 11. What could they say to those Titles which the Popes attributed to themselves of being the spouses Husbands of the Church and the Vicars of Jesus Christ The Church my Spouse said Innocent the Third were not married to me if she did not bring me something she has given me a Dowry of an inestimable price the fulness of all spiritual things the greatness and spaciousness of Temporals the Grandeur and Abundance both of the one and the other She has bestowed on me the Miter in token of things Spiritual The Crown for a sign of the Temporal the Mitre for the Priesthood the Crown for the Kingdom substituting me in his place who had it wrote on his Vestment and his Thigh The King of Kings and Lord of Lords After the same stile Martin the fifth intitled himself in this manner in the Instructions which he gave to a Nuntio that he sent to Constantinople as Raynaldus relates The most Holy and most Happy who has Heavenly power who is the Lord of the Earth the successor of Peter The Christ or Annointed of the Lord the Lord of the Vniverse the Father of Kings the Light of the World the Soveraign High Priest Pope Martin 12. What could they say to that Scandalous applying to the Popes those passages of the Scripture which only and immediately regard God himself and his Son Jesus Christ Baronius relates that Alexander the Third making his Entry into the Town of Montpellier a Sarasin Prince prostrated himself before him and adored him as the Holy and venerable God of the Christians and that those that were of the Popes train ravished with Admiration said one to another those words of the Prophet All the Kings of the Earth shall worship him and all Nations shall do him service So in the Council of Later an one complemented Leo the Tenth with these Applications of Scripture God has given you all power both in Heaven and in Earth Weep not Daughter of Sion Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah of the stock of David And those of Palermo by the Relation of Paulus Jovius prostrate at the feet of Martin the Fourth made their addresses to him in the same words that they say to Jesus Christ before their Altars Thou that takest away the Sins of the World have mercy upon us Thou that takest away the the sins of the World have mercy upon us Thou that takest away the sins of the World grant us thy peace 13. What could our Fathers say to those strange Declarations of some Popes that maintained that all Laws resided in them that all the Rules of Justice were enclosed within their Breasts that it was necessary to the Salvation of every Creature that he should be subject to the Pope of Rome that they had in their hands the Temporal and Spiritual Sword and other expressions of the like nature So Paul the second answered Platina who requested him that he would dismiss him to the prosecuting of his suit about a very important affair before the Auditors of the Rota because the Sentence that the Pope had given was unjust Is it so then says he that you would have us be brought to be try'd before the Judges Do not you know that we have all the Laws shut up within our own Breast In the close of that business Platina having taken the boldness to say he would demand Justice of a Council the Pope put him into a strait Prison So also Boniface the Eighth begins one of his Decretals in these words Licet Romanus Pontifex qui jura omnia in scrinio pectoris sui censetur habere It was the same person who desin'd the necessity of subjecting ones self to the Pope after this manner Subesse Romana Pontifici omni humanae Creaturae dicimus declaramus definimus pronuntiamus esse de necessitate Salutis and who said that although the Papal Authority was given to a man and that though it was exercised by a Man it was never the less Divine that though the Papal power came to be depraved yet it could not be judged by any man but by God alone because the Apostle has said that the Spiritual man judges all things and is himself judged of no man That there are two Swords that are in the power of the Church the Spiritual and the Temporal the one of the which had its use for the Church and the other the Church her self exercised the one is in the hand of the Pope and the other in those of Kings and Souldiers but whose management depends on the good pleasure and the sufferance of the Pope 14. What could our Fathers say to those prodigious pretensions that the Popes made over Emperours and Kings even to make their Crowns depend on their pleasure to dethrone them to give away their Kingdoms to others and to absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance Every one knows what the decisions were that Gregory the Seventh made in a Council held at Rome in the year 1076. against the Emperor Henry the Fourth whom he had deposed and whose Subjects he had absolved of their Oaths of Allegiance One may call those decisions the Dictatorship of the Pope do but see some of their Articles as they are set down by Baronius That the Bishop of Rome only could wear the Imperial Ornaments That all Princes were wont to kiss the feet of the Pope alone That only his name ought to be mentioned in the Churches That there was but one chief name in the World which was that of the Pope That he had right to depose Emperours That his Decrees could be made void by none whosoever he were but that he alone could make void all others That he could loose the Subjects of wicked Princes from their Oaths of Allegiance The Decretals are full of the like attempt of Boniface the Eighth upon Philip the Fair one of our Kings He went so far as to excommunicate him and to absolve his subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance and in fine to give away his Crown to the Emperor Albert. I confess that he was punished as he deserved and that the French on this occasion served their Prince with great zeal The same Platina mentioned before could not forbear making this reflexion on the Death of this Pope Thus dy'd this Boniface who thought of nothing less then of terrifying Emperors Kings and Princes and all men that he might the more inspire into them a Religious respect and who pretended to give and take away by force whole Kingdomes to overturn and re-establish all men by the meer motion of his Will But howsoever it was the bad success of Boniface could not hinder our Fathers from judging as they ought of these insolent pretensions of the Popes and taking notice that those who made their very Religion to serve their Ambition seeing their Ambition had no bounds had a peculiar interest
to feed the people with their Superstitions for they were such as enslav'd their Souls where true Piety would have ennobled and freed Men from that yoak which they would have imposed on us Further if any would more particularly see how far the Claims of the Roman See went they need but to read what Augustine Steuchus Library-keeper to the Pope has wrote for he ascribes to the Popes the very same Temporal rights in the same Latitude wherein the Old Roman Empire possest them and he proves from the Register of Gregory the Seventh that Spain Hungary England Denmark Russia Croatia Dalmatia Arragon Portugal Bohemia Swedland Norway Dacia did all heretofore belong to the Popes and that all that Pepin Charlemain Henry and other Emperors gave to the Church brought him not any new rights but only set him in the possession of that which the violence of the Barbarians had wrested from him 15. What could our Fathers say to those unjust Usurpations of the Popes over the whole Body of the Church over which they pretended Soveraignly to reign to have Authority to decide matters of Faith to make new Laws to dispence with the Antient Constitutions to call Councils to transfer them from one place to another to Authorise or to condemn them to Judge all the World without being liable to be judged of any in a word of making all things to depend on their power and binding all Churches to submit themselves to its decisions about matters of Faith and Rules of Discipline not only with a bare external obedience but with a real acquiescence of their Consciences By Reason of which they were accustomed as they practise it even at this present in their Bulls to place in the Front the fulness of their Power and to adjoyn this Clause That no man should dare to be so rash as to infringe or go contrary to their Decrees under penalty of incurring the indignation of God and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul I know there were some that sometimes did very strongly oppose these pretensions of the Court of Rome that some Councils did labour to repress them and that the Church of France has appeared often enough jealous of its Liberty But besides that those oppositions never had that success which might justly have been hoped for on the part of the Popes who almost always eluded them besides that I say they did but serve to confirm the prejudices of our Fathers by dayly discovering to them more and more of the Corruption of the See of Rome 16. What could they Judge of those Dispensations that the Popes gave in the business of Marriages within prohibited degrees against the express words of the Law of God and in the Case of Vows which they themselves held to be lawful and in divers other matters even against that which they call the general State of the Church What do we think we ought to say at present said Gerson of the easiness whereby Dispensations are given by the Pope and by the Prelats to lawful Oaths to reasonnable Vows to a vast Plurality of Benefices against all the minds or as he speaks even to a universal gainsaying of Councils in priviledges and exemptions that destroy common Equity Who can reckon up all the ways whereof they serve themselves to loosen the force of Ecclesiastical Discipline and to oppose and destroy that of the Gospel Who can read without some Commotion that which Innocent the Third has wrote That by the fulness of his Power he had a lawful power to dispence with that that was beyond all Equity And that that the Glossary has subjoyned That the Pope can dispence against an Apostle against the Canons of the Apostles and against the Old Testament in the Case of Tithes It is added that he cannot dispence against the general State of the Church and yet elsewhere the Gloss on the Decree of Gratian assures us that the Pope may sometimes dispense against the General State of the Church and for that alledges the Example of Innocent the Third in the Council of Lateran 17. What could our Fathers Judge of those vast abuses that were committed in dispencing with the Ecclesiastical Functions given most frequently to persons altogether unworthy and uncapable and sometimes to Children to the great scandal of Christianity which complained of it highly a long time ago They prefer said St. Bernard little School-boys and young Children to Church Dignities because of the Nobility of their Birth So that you may see those that are just got from under the Ferula go to command Priests who were yet more fit to escape the Rod then to be employ'd in Government for they are far more sensible of the pleasure of being freed from their Masters then of that of becoming Masters themselves Those are their first thoughts but afterwards growing more bold they very soon learn the Art of appropriating the Altars to themselves and of emptying the purses of those that are under them without going to any other School then that of their Ambition and their Covetousness How few may one find now a days of those who are raised to the Episcopal Grandure said Nicholas de Clemangis who have either read or know how to read the Holy Scripture otherwise then by first beginning to read They have never touched any other part of the Holy Bible then the Cover although in their Installment they swear that they know it all 18. What could our Fathers say to that Simony which was every where openly exercised in the Church of Rome in all things The Court of Rome says Aeneas Sylvius gives nothing without money It sells the very Imposition of hands and the gifts of the Holy Ghost and will give pardon of Sins to none but such who will part with their Money The Church that Jesus Christ has chosen for his Spouse without spot and blemish says Nicholas de Clemangis is in these days a Warehouse of Ambition and Business of Theft and Rapine The Sacraments and all Orders even to that of the Priests are exposed to Sale For Money they bestow Favours Dispensations Licences Offices Benefices They sell pardons of sins Masses and the very Administration of our Lords Body If any one have a mind to a Bishoprick he needs but to get himself furnished with Money yet not a little Sum but a great one must purchase such a great Title He needs but to empty his Purse to obtain the Dignity that he seeks but he may soon after fill it again with advantage by more ways then one If any one desire to be made a Prebendary or a Priest of any Church or to have any other charge it matters not whether his merits or his Life or his Manners be known but it is very requisite it should be known how much Money he has For according as he has that he must have his hopes succeed Such were the Complaints that honest men made in those days and