Discipline and Faith shall appear to be there also will be the Truth of Scriptures and Expositions and all Christian Traditions Si quid horum per orbem frequentat Ecclesia Amongst such things whatsoever is practised by the Church through the world to dispute whether she ought not to be imitated therein is a mark of most insolent madness Scire sufficit It is a sufficient Motive to reject from our Belief whatsoever we know to be contrary to the teaching of the Church Dicet aliquis si Divinis eloquiis It may be demanded how if both the Devil and his Disciples do make use of and apply Divine Scriptures Sentences and Promises of whom some are false Apostles others false Prophets and all of them Heretics What shall Catholic children of our Mother the Church do How shall they discern truth from falshood in interpreting Holy Scriptures Hereto we answer according as we have received from Holy and learned men before us that they must be very careful to interpret Scriptures according to the Traditions of the Universal Church and according to the Rules of Catholic Doctrine THE SECOND QUESTION BUT WHY ARE YOU A PROTESTANT §. 45 CAth. Sir Have you considered seriously on the Subject of our last Discourse Prot. Yes Cath. And have you found either in Scripture Tradition Councils or Holy Fathers any warrant to remain divided both in Doctrine and Discipline from all Churches antiently existent upon Earth and at the same time to profess notwithstanding a Belief of One Holy Catholic Church out of whose Communion there is no Salvation Prot. I freely accknowledge that I am not able to produce any considerable Quotations to confront yours Quotations I mean asserting the Authority of particular or new-erected Churches independent on others Cath. Then since it seems both Scripture Tradition Councils and Fathers have given their Testimonies against you Why are you still a Protestant §. 46. Prot. Sir I suppose you do believe I should be very glad to find out a Church to whose Authority I could think my self obliged entirely to submit mine own judgment and securely to commit my Soul to her guidance But hitherto not having been able to find such an one I must be content to stay where I am For as for the Roman Church to whose Communion alone you would invite me she appears to me so wholly depraved that I think a real Miracle would hardly draw me to joyn my self to her Communion Cath. I see Sir that you despairing to justifie your own Churches and to excuse them from Schism do seek to draw me to particular Disputes By which notwithstanding you can receive no benefit at all whatever the success of such Disputes shall be For still the unpardonable guilt of Schism will lie upon you However I will not refuse so far to comply with you Therefore tell me Wherein consists that depravation you speak of Prot. It consists in this that both her Doctrines and Discipline are framed as on purpose to comply with wordly interests and by consequence are opposed to the Spirit of Christianity Cath. How does that appear §. 47. Prot. It appears more than sufficiently in this that as the late learned Arcbishop of Spalato observes all those Points of your Belief and Practice which we condemn and for which we separate from your Church are such as manifestly have a strong influence on the satisfying either her Ambition or Covetousness Cath. Which are the Points which you suppose to comply with Ambition Prot. These which here follow 1. Your Churches assuming the Title of Catholic to her self alone with exclusion of all other Churches 2. The Popes assumed Universal Authority 3. His pretended Infallibility in determining Controversies 4. His usurped Temporal Authority 5. A Power to be acknowledged as given to Priests by consecrating the outward Symbols to make the glorified Body of our Saviour present on the Alter 6. The Offering it in Sacrifice to the Father 7. The exposing of it to mens Adoration 8. The Obligation imposed on all sinners to discover their most secret sins to Priests in Confession and to submit to satisfactions enjoyned by them 9. A proud esteem of attaining to Iustification and Salvation by your own Merits Thus your Clergy not content to invent Doctrines proper to procure their own Exaltation would instill Pride into the people also §. 48. Cath. For what Doctrines do you accuse the Roman Church of Covetousness Prot. Of this latter sort are the Romane Doctrines 1. Touching Prayer for the dead and Purgatory out of the torments whereof Souls are to be redeemed by Masses Alms c. 2. The gaining of Heaven by mony given for Indulgences 3. The Invocation of Saints 4. The worshipping of their Images and Relicks To which Pilgrimages are ordained with costly Offerings c. §. 49. Cath. This Observation made by the infamous Apostate you named if rightly considered truly seems to argue a guilt somewhere yet not in the Church but much rather in those who seperated from her For it strongly argues that since to oppose her they made choice only of those Points which regarded the Honour Authority and Wealth of the Clergy the true Motives inducing them to rebel against the Church were not any zeal for Truth or care for their Souls for they acknowledg her Orthodox as to all Points of Doctrine approved by former Heretics That therefore which stirred up their rage against her was Envy Hatred of Obedience and a thirst unquenchable to rob her of the Treasure and Possessions conferred on her by the Piety of their Holy Progenitours Now Sir tell me sincerely If you were to establish a Church would you take for your pattern that Schismatical King Ieroboam who chose Priests from the dreggs of the People or God himself who instituted a splendid Clergy Prot. It cannot indeed be denied but that contemptible needy and depending Directours of Souls will but very meanly discharge so high an Office as Christ has committed to them having made them Spiritual Iudges of Mankind and stiled them the Light of the world and the Salt of the Earth §. 50. Cath. If the first Reformers had been of your Judgment they would first have reformed in themselves their inordinate Passions But Sir if you please let us leave the judgment of mens secret intentions to Almighty God to whom alone they are open and transparent However this may with full assurance be asserted That if Sacriledge and freedom from Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction were not the only prime Motives they were and will be the prime Effects of your multiplied Reformations §. 51. Prot. I am well content to desist from enquiring into the secret thoughts of persons on either side And therefore I will henceforth consider the forementioned Points in debate between us absolutely and in themselves And so doing you must give me leave to say That this also may with full assurance be asserted that whatever Motives the Roman Church may have to
wilfully misinterpret Scripture to their own destruction especially in Points Fundamental which are so clearly set down in Scripture that no sober Enquirer can be mistaken in them Cath. Well Sir I have at present done asking Questions and now better enabled by what you have said will endeavor to give you a fuller Answer to the Question you proposed in the begining viz. Why are you a Catholick §. 11. First then Sir I am a Catholick because I believe that Christ the Author and Finisher of our Faith is infinitely both good wise and omnipotent His goodness inclined him to come down into this world to save mankind by establishing a Church upon earth which should remain till the end of the world and in which the way to Heaven should be so taught as not only the Wise and Learned but the Poor Simple and Ignorant also should by Faith and Obedience be made partakers of Eternal Happiness Now his goodness having designed this his wisdom enabled him to appoint ways and means proper to effect that his blessed Design and omnipotence to make those means successful § 12. The general efficacious means to accomplish this are first The revealing his whole will to his Church which we acknowledg to be sufficiently done in Holy Scripture as to all points absolutely necessary to Salvation though in all those points not so clearly to every one that without a Teacher their sense may not be mistaken Neither doth Scripture make an express discernment of what points are necessary And secondly The assisting of this his Church with fidelity and a constant performance of her duty in declaring all necessary Divine Truth manifested to her to her Subjects with a command that all Christians should obey and submit to what she shall teach or enjoyn them God having thus revealed his whole Will to his one Catholic Church it necessarily and evidently follows 1. That Ignorance or Error in any Points of Christian Doctrine necessary to Salvation is damnable 2. That a Seperation from this one Church is damnable also upon what pretence soever the separation be made §. 13. Now to avoid eternal Misery thus threatned by Error or Schism only one of these two ways is possible 1. By ones own light to penetrate into all Mysteries so as to be most firmly assured of a right understanding of all necessary verities revealed by God in Holy Scriptures 2. Or out of a distrust of our own abilities to submit our Reason and internal Assent to Authority The former of these ways all Sects divided from the Roman Church and among themselves do uniformly take being forced hereto by denying any visible Society of men to have any authority obliging the Consciences of their Subjects and by conseqence they have all if any an equal Title that is indeed equally none at all to challenge belief one as well as another neither can they rationally without deserting their common Ground condemn or excommunicate one another The latter way we Catholics only take and as we think prudently and surely §. 14. For Sir I beseech you to consider what a busy laborious task you have undertaken by being a Protestant of what Sect among them soever you are Before you can promise to your self any rest of mind in the Peculiar Fundamental Doctrines of your Sect your Conscience must satisfy you that you have not embraced a Religion by hazard but after a diligent sincere and effectual examination of all the Reasons and arguments not only of Catholicks submitting to Authority but also of other Sectaries who proceeding your way of interpreting Scripture by a private light do condemn your Doctrines or whose Doctrines you condemn To be able to do all this how many Volums of Controversy are you obliged to read and examine Besides this it will be absolutely necessary that you be perfectly studyed in all the Books of Scripture with the best Commentaries on them both Ancient and Modern since you ground your Religion upon a sense of Scripture which perhaps not any of them will allow and then in equity you are to examine their reasons for it Now what one mans age will suffice for all this business though but in one or two Points controverted and though the party were learned and had never so much leasure What then shall ignorant persons do who yet make up the greatest number of Christians What shall Trades-men and Day-Labourers do who can scarce allow from their necessary Vocations any time at all dayly even to say their Prayers yet it concerns all these upon the venture of Eternal Happiness or Misery not to forsake or embrace a Religion without a sufficient Examination made by themselves of the grounds of it since they are told and believe it that they must trust to themselves only because no external Authority upon Earth can require from them a submission of their judgment inasmuch as according to their general fundamental Positions no Authority is infallible §. 15. Now whereas you said That all Fundamental Doctrines of Christianity are so clearly set down in Scripture that no sober Enquirer can be mistaken in them If this were true yet since neither the Scripture nor you your selves do clearly express which and how many Doctrines are fundamental every tittle of Scriptures must be read and examined by every one of you for fear a necessary Doctrine should chance to escape you But to demonstrate the groundlesness of that your Assertion I desire you to reflect on the prodigious multiplicity of Sects swarming in this age all which ground their Belief upon pretended clear Texts of Scripture alone you will then scarce find one Article of Christian Faith exempted from their Disputes There are not wanting who deny the Mistery of the Holy Trinity the Divinity and Incarnation of our Lord the Divine Personality of the Holy Ghost Some absolutely deny Freewill whilst others exalt the power of it so high as to affirm Divine Grace unnecessary to its best Operations Some affirm our Nature to be so incurably polluted by Original Sin as that all the best actions of the Regenerate are Mortal Sins Others will acknowledge no Original Sin at all Some affirm Baptism necessary to Salvation even of Infants Others reject Infant-Baptism and Calvinists assert that Infants without Baptism are sanctified by their Parents faith and that some Infants dying though baptized may be damned Some believe mans Soul to be mortal and that it perisheth with the Body not having any Knowledg or Sentiment after death Some confine God to a determinate place in Heaven and also deny his Prescience of future Contingents Lastly some deny an Eternity of torments in Hell Surely you will not deny most of these to be contrary to Fundamental Doctrines of our Faith yet all who maintain these Tenets and all Sectaries who contradict them do ground themselves upon express Scripture which to you seems so clear You cannot be more confident that you have light on the true sence of Scripture than they of a
to Scripture I desire you to take into consideration that the same Roman Church at the same time both proposed the Belief of those Doctrins to your first Reformers and also gave them the Scriptures testifying that they were the infallible Word of God Therefore certainly it was far from being evident to her that her Doctrines did evidently contradict Divine Revelation Now you will not surely deny but that in the Catholic Church there are men as learned and those in a far greater number than among Protestants Men I say who also make the Scriptures their principal study and have published almost innumerable Commentaries on them again Men of whom a great number live sequestred from the world in an assiduous Practice of Spiritual Prayer and therefore not likely to have their judgments perverted by worldly interests Yet not any one of these does see or but suspect that the Faith they profess is contradicted by Gods Word on the contrary they invincibly demonstrate that the Church has been as the only Depository of Scripture so likewise of the true Sence of it How comes then that to be evident to you which is invisible to them Which way went the Spirit of God from the whole Church to inhabite a debauched incestuous Fryer or a stigmatized Pichard upon whose credit doubtless you have taken up your Evidence If they could have shewed you in Scripture such passages as these The Pope is not the Supream Bishop and Visible Head of the Church Bread by Sanctification does not become the Body of Christ We ought not to confess our sins to Priests Purgatory is a meer humane invention It is an injury to Christ to desire Saints but none to desire Sinners to pray for us c. Such sayings indeed as these might have justifyed your charge against the Church that she contradicts Scripture But where are such sayings to be found except it be in the Heretical Writings of your Reformers On the contrary some Points contradictory to those are found litterally contained in Scripture and to elude them you are foced to have recourse to figurative sences and the rest are conveyed to us by the same Authority by which we receive the Scripture it self Yea by the Holy Fathers justified as consonant to Scripture and however I suppose you will not say that silence is equivolent to express contradiction The utmost that you can say is that perhaps you can produce now and then some scattered Texts of Scripture from which you can make a shew of arguing against some Tenets of the Catholic Church But what will that avail you since Probability as hath been said will not excuse you for omitting a necessary duty of Obedience and incurring the horible guilt of Schism Where now do you see an evidence that the Church contradicts Scripture Prot. I shall be better enabled to give a resolution in this Point when according to your promise you shall have given me an account of the necessary Doctrines of your Church in the points controverted between us §. 60. Cath. That Promise I will now with Gods assistance discharge through all the Points mentioned by you in the beginning And first as touching the two first Points viz. 1. The Churches Authority 2. The Popes Universal Iurisdiction c. enough hath been said in our former discourse Yet for your further satisfaction I will enlarge my self a little more Take therefore into your consideration that it is a Fundamental Truth agreed on by all Catholics That the only Objects of Catholic Faith are such Divine Truths as are revealed in Gods Word and also proposed to all by the Catholic Church to be believed by Divine Faith Now this general Ground being presupposed in case any Controversies should arise touching the sence of any Divine Truths revealed it is unquestionably necessary that some Means should be appointed by God to determine such controversies and to prevent a dissipation of his Church by Heresies and Schisms And what other Mean can be imagined efficacious hereto then what hath been taught and practised even from the Apostles time and this declared by the Council of Trent That no man trusting to his own prudence or skill shall presume to interpret Holy Scripture in matters of Faith or Manners pertaining to edification of Christian Doctrine wresting it to his own sences against that sence which our Holy Mother the Church doth or hath held to whom it belongs to judg of the true sence and interpretation of Holy Scriptures or also against the unanimous consent of the Fathers This is that which the Roman Catholic Church teaches concerning her Authority of interpreting controverted Texts of Scripture No more then this is any Catholic obliged to believe Now I leave it to your conscience whether you can think it a sufficient Ground for you to break from her Communion upon this quarrel because she judges more fit that the judgment of the whole Body of Teachers and Governors appointed by God in her should prevail against your single judgment or that of a few Apostat-Ministers Especially considering the Promises made by our Lord to his Apostles and their lawful Successors that his Spirit should remain with them and direct them into all Truth till the end of the world so as that the gates of Hell that is say the Fathers Heresies should never prevail against them Prot. I see it is in vain to contradict this §. 61. Cath. Let us next proceed to what the Church has determined touching the Priviledges and Authority of the Prime Pastor the Bishop of Rome Thus then we read in the Confession of Faith collected by the Pope himself out of the Council of Trent I acknowledg the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church to be the Mother and Mistress of all Churches and I promise true Obedience to the Bishops of Rome Successor of St. Peter Prince of the Apostles and Vicar of Iesus Christ. Here the See Apostolic being acknowledged the Mother and Mistress of all Churches and the Pope Vicar of Christ his universal Iurisdiction is therein acknowledged which Jurisdiction or Authority we are not to suppose to be arbitrary and unlimitted but as we read in a Canon of the Council of Florence consented to by the Emperor Patriark and other Bishops of Greece to be exercised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. after the manner as is also contained in the Gests of Oecumenical Councils and Sacred Canons And such a Primacy invested with Authority as this the General Council of Chalcedon admitted by Protestants does acknowledg in him which is also attested by Tradition and practice from the beginning §. 62. Now the necessity of such a standing Authority in Gods Church is thus grounded The absolutely Supream Ecclesiastical Authority against which can lye no Appeal is confessedly residing in a lawful General Council by which all Debates whatsoever may be determined all necessary Laws enacted c. But it being a matter of infinite difficulty especially since the division of