many others so like to the Arguments and Language of the Seekers and Infidels that we can scarcely know whom we hear when they speak to us For the discovery of their desperate fraud in this point and the right confuting of them 1. You must distinguish them out of their confusion 2. You must grant them all that is true and just which we shall as stiffly defend as they 3. You must reject their errors and confute them And 4. You may turn their own principall weapon against them to the certain destruction of their cause Of all these briefly in course 1. For the first two I have spoke at large in the Preface to the second part of the Saints Rest and in the determination in the first part of my Book against Infidelity But briefly to touch some of the most necessary things here 1. We must distinguish the Tradition of the Scriptures or the Scripture doctrine from the Tradition of other doctrines pretended to be the rest of the word of God 2. We must distinguish between a certain proved Tradition and that which is unproved and uncertain if not grosly feigned 3. We must distinguish between the Tradition of the whole Catholick Church or the greater part and the Tradition of the lesser more corrupted selfish part even the Roman part 4. We must distinguish between a Tradition of necessary doctrine or practice and the Tradition of mutable Orders 5. And we must distinguish between Tradition by way of Testimony or History or by way of Teaching Ministry and Tradition by way of Decisive Judgement as to the Universal Church suffer them not to jumble all these together if you would not be cheated in the dark 2. And then concerning Tradition we grant all these following Propositions so that it is not all Tradition that we deny 1. We grant that the Holy Scriptures come down to us by the certain Tradition of our fathers and Teachers and that what the seeing and hearing of the Apostles was to them that lived with them that Tradition and belief of certain Tradition is to us by reason of our distance from the time and place So that though the Scripture bear its own evidence of a Divine author in the Image and superscription of God upon it yet we are beholden to Tradition for the Books themselves and for much of our knowledge that these are the true writings of the Apostles and Prophets and all and not depraved c. 2. We thankfully acknowledge that the Essentials of the faith and more hath been delivered even from the Apostles in other wayes or forms besides the Scriptures as 1. In the Professions of the Churches faith 2. In the baptismal Covenant and signs and whole administration 3. In the Sacrament of the Lords Supper 4. In Catechisms or Catechizings 5. In the prayers and praises of the Church 6. In the hearts of all true believers where God hath written all the Essentials of the Christian saith and Law So that we will not do as the Papists perversly do when God delivereth us the Christian Religion with two hands Scripture compleatly and Verbal Tradition in the essentials they quarrell with the one hand Scripture on pretence of defending the other so will not we quarrell with Tradition the other hand but thankfully confess a Tradition of the same Christianity by unwritten means which is delivered more fully in the Scripture and this Tradition is in some respect subordinate to Scripture and in some respect co-ordinate as the spirits left hand as it were to hold us out the truth 3. We confess that the Apostles delivered the Gospel by voice as well as by writing and that before they wrote it to the Churches 4. By this preaching we confess there were Christians made that had the doctrine of Christ in their hearts and Churches gathered that had his ordinances among them before the Gospel was written 5. And we confess that the Converted were bound to teach what they had received to their children servants and others 6. And that there was a setled Ministry in many Churches ordained to preach the Gospel as they had received it from the Apostles before it was written 7. And that the said ordinances of Baptism Catechizing Professions Eucharist Prayer Praise c. were instituted and in use before the Gospell was written for the Churches 8. And that when the Gospel was written as Tradition bringeth it to us so Ministers are commissioned to deliver both the Books and the doctrine of this Book as the Teachers of the Church and to preach it to those without for their conversion 9. And that Parents and Masters are bound to teach this doctrine to their children and servants yea if a Minister or other person were cast into the Indies or America without a Bible he must teach the doctrine though he remembred not the words 10. We grant that to the great benefit of the Church the writers of all ages have in subserviency to Scripture delivered down the Sacred Verities and Historians the matters of fact 11. And that the unanimous Consent of all the Churches manifested in their constant professions and practices is a great confirmation to us 12. And so is the suffering of the Martyrs for the same truth 13. And the Declarations of such consent by Councils is also a confirming Tradition 14. And the Confessions of Hereticks Jews and other Infidels are Providentiall and Historical Traditions for confirmation 15. And we profess that if we had any Certain proof of a Tradition from the Apostles of any thing more then is written in Scripture we would receive it All this we grant them for Tradition 3. But in these points following we oppose them 1. We take the holy Scriptures as the Compleat universal Rule or Law of faith and Holy living and we know of no Tradition that containeth another word of God Nay we know there is none such because the Scripture is true which asserteth its own sufficiency Scripture and unwritten Tradition are but two wayes of acquainting the world with the same Christian doctrine and not with divers parts of that Doctrine so as that Tradition should add to Scripture yea contrarily it is but the substance of greatest verities that are conveyed by unwritten Tradition but that and much more is contained in the Scripture where the Christian doctrine is compleat 2. The manner of delivery in a form of words which no man may alter and in so much fullness and perspicuity is much to be preferred before the meer verbal delivery of the same doctrine For 1. The Memory of man is not so strong as to retain as much as the Bible doth contain and preserve it safe from alterations or Corruptions Or if one man were of so strong a memory no man can imagine that all or most should be so Or if one Generation had such wonderfull memories we cannot imagine that all their posterity should have the like If there were no statute Books Records or Law-books in
give the Presbyterians and the Presbyterians take them to be Antichristian Some of you are Arminians some Calvinists some say Christ dyed for all and some say no some are for Justification only by Christs Passive Righteousness and some also by his active with other such differences even in these fundamentall points I repeat their words just as I have heard they make use of them with the people and now I shall open the deceit of them in particular Answers to each part And 1. For the matter of unity I have spoken of it before and dare leave it to all the world that are judicions whether the Papists or we are more unanimons or more divided Only to the Instances of division I shall speak further now 1. For the matter of Church Government we are all agreed in the substance of it except a very few straglers As concerning the duty of Penitence Confession Restitution Contrition and of the excommunicating the obstinate and Absolving the penitent c. All this we agree is the duty of the Presbyters and we agree that these Presbyters may have a President only some think that the President is ejusdem ordinis of the same order differing but in degree and hath no power jure divino but what the Presbyters have but only the exercise is restrained as to the Presbyters by men but others think that the President is a Bishop eminently of another order having not only the exercise but the power above the Presbyters And is this difference so great a business And do not these cheaters know that if for this they would reproach us they must do so by themselves Know they not that among their own Schoolmen there is the same difference or in most points the same And know they not that if differences in Ceremonies or Modes should unchurch us or disgrace us it would fall as foul on the whole Catholick Church and that in the very primitive times Did they never read of the difference between the Asian and the Roman Churches about the celebration of Easter day and how Polycrates and the rest did plead Tradition against the Church of Romes Tradition and how Irenaeus did reprehend the Bishop of Rome for his uncharitable censure of the Churches for so small a difference And how Polycarp and Anicetus Bishop of Rome could not agree as building upon contrary Traditions but yet maintained Christian peace as Eusebius out of Irenaeus his Epistle to Victor tels us lib. 5. Hist Eccl. cap. 26. And the English and Irish Churches long after that adhered to the Asian way even after the Councill of Nice had ended the controversie on the Roman side And who knows not how many more controversies greater then these of ours have been among the Churches of Christ without their unchurching or disparagement to Religion And for the Doctrinal Controversies mentioned most of them lie more in words then in sence and all of them are far from the foundation though they be about Christ who is the Foundation If one of your picture-drawers mistake the complexion of Christ or if one should say he was not buried in a sheet these are errours about Christ that is the foundation and yet far from the foundation Those of us that say Christ dyed for all and those that say he dyed not for all do agree as your School-men do that he dyed for all as to the sufficiency of his death and price but he dyed not for all as to the actuall efficiency of pardon and salvation Is not this your doctrine and is not this ours and are not you as much disagreed about it as we what else meant the late decision against the Jansenists and what meaneth the present persecution of them in France And yet have you the faces to make this a reproach of us And for the righteousness of Christ we are commonly agreed that it is both his Obedience and Passion that we are justified and saved by though we are not all of a mind about the reason of their several interests which difference is so far from unchristening us that it makes no considerable odds among our selves who are censorious enough in cases of difference And for different forms of worship sure these men do wilfully forget what a number of Offices and Mass books have been among themselves and other Churches and what a number of Letanies or Liturgies of several ages and Churches they have given us in the Bibliotheca Patrum but more of this anon 2. And as for the changes and unfixedness which they charge us with we are contented that 1. Our principles 2. And our practises be compared with the Papists and then let even modest and judicious enemies be judges which of us are more fixed or more mutable 1. For our Principles we take only Christ to be the chief Foundation of our Faith and his inspired Prophets and Apostles to be the secondary foundation whereas the Papists build upon many a most ungodly ignorant man because he is the Pope of Rome And which of these is the firmer foundation 2. We take nothing for our Rule but the sure word of God contained in the holy Scriptures but the Papists take the Decrees of all Popes and Councils for their Rule Our Rule they confess to be Divine and infallible Their Rule we affirm to be humane and fallible Which then is like to be more firm Our Rule the sacred Scriptures in the Originall languages as to the words and the matter of them as to the sence the Papists themselves confess unchangeable but whether they will say as much of their own I will try by two or three Instances 1. What an alteration Pope Sixtus and Pope Clement made in the Vulgar Latine Bible which is one part of their Rule I told you before and Dr. James his Bellum Papale will tell you the particulars 2. The other part is their Decrees of which Pope Leo the tenth in Bulla contr Luth. in Binnius page 655. saith the holy Popes our predecessors never erred in their Canons and Constitutions And yet hear what Pope Julius the second saith in his General Councill at the Laterane with their approbation Cant. pragmat sanct monitor Binnius vol. 4. pag. 560. Though the Institutions of sacred Canons holy Fathers and Popes of Rome and their Decrees be judged immutable as made by Divine Inspiration yet the Pope of Rome who though of unequal merits holdeth the place of the Eternal King and the Maker of all things and all Laws on earth may abrogate these Decrees when they are abused You see here from the mouth of Infallibility it self if the Roman faith have any of what continuance we may judge their Immutable Decrees to be of which are made as by Divine inspiration they are Immutable till the Pope abrogate them who being in Gods place though of unequal merits O humble confession is of power to do it 3. We have a Rule that was perfected by Christ and his Apostles to which
which is most sufficient and most cleare in it self but for us This we all yield The second way is necessary to sciences diminutely and insufficiently delivered by their authors for their supplement so Aristotle is supplemented by Albertus Magnus c. The third way specially if it be not excessive is tolerable to the well being though it be not necessary The fourth way assertively is to be rejected as Poyson Thus are the authorities to be understood that forbid to add to or diminish from the Scripture Deut. 12 32. Well! by this time you may see that when such doctrine as this for Scripture sufficiency and perfection as the Rule of faith and life admitting no addition as necessary but explication nor any other as tolerable but moderate ampliation which indeed is the same I say when this doctrine past so lately in a Popish General Council you may see that the very Doctrine of Traditions equaled with Scripture or being another word of God necessary to faith and salvation containing what is wanting in Scripture is but lately sprung up in the world And sure the Traditions themselves be not old then when the conceit of them came but lately into the world 4. Well I have done the three first parts of this task but the chief is yet behind which is to shew 1 How little the Papists get by their Argument from Tradition 2. And how â—uch they lose by it even all their cause 1. Two things they very much plead Tradition for the one is their private doctrines and practices in which they disagree from other Christians and here they lose their labour with the judicious 1. Because they give us no sufficient proof that their Tradition is Apostolical 2. Because the dissent of other Churches sheweth that it is not universal with other Reasons before mentioned 2. The other Cause which they plead Tradition for is the Doctrine of Christianity it self And this they do in design to lead men to the Church of Rome as if we must be no Christians unless we are Christians upon the credit of the Pope and his Subjects And here I offer to their Consideration these two things to shew them the vanity of their arguing 1. We do not strive against you in producing any Tradition or Testimony of Antiquity for the Scripture or for Scripture Doctrine we make as much advantage of such just Tradition as you What do such men as White Vane Cressy c. think of when they argue so eagerly for the advantage of Tradition to prove the Scripture and Christian faith Is this any thing against us Nothing at all We accept our Religion from both the hands of Providence that bring it us Scripture and Tradition we abhor the contempt which these partial Disputers cast upon Scripture but we are not therefore so partial our selves as to refuse any collateral or subordinate help for our faith The more Testimonies the better The best of us have need of all the advantages for our faith that we can get When they have extolled the Certainty of Tradition to the highest we gladly joyn with them and accept of any certain Tradition of the mind of God And I advise all that would prove themselves wise defenders of the faith to take heed of rejecting Arguments from Providences or any necessary Testimony of man especially concerning matter of fact or of rejecting true Church History because the Papists over value it under the name of Tradition left such prove guilty of the like partiality and injuriousness to the truth as the Papists are And whereas the Papists imagine that this must lead us to their Church for Tradition I answer that in my next observation which is 2. We go beyond the Papists in arguing for just Tradition of the Christian faith and we make far greater advantage of it then they can do For 1. They argue but from Authoritative Decision by the Pope under the name of Church-Tradition excepting the French party whereas we argue from true History and certain Antiquity and prove what we say Where note 1. That their Tradition is indeed no Tradition for if it must be taken upon the credit of a man as supposed Infallible by supernatural if not miraculous endowment this is not Tradition but Prophesie And if they prove the man to be such a man it s all one to the Church whether he say that This was the Apostles doctrine or This I deliver my self to you from God For if he were so qualified he had the power and credit of a prophet or Apostle himself And therefore they must prove the Pope to be a Prophet before their kind of Tradition can get credit and when they have done that there is no need of it this their honest Dr. Holden was ware of upon which he hath so handsomely canvassed them 2. Note also that such as Dr. Holden Cressy Vane White and other of the French way that plead for Tradition mean a quite other thing then the Jesuited Italian Papist meanes and while they plead for universal Tradition they come nearer to the Protestants then to their Brethren if they did not contradict themselves when they have done by making meer Romish Tradition to be universal 3. Note also that when Papists speak of Tradition confusedly they give us just reason to call them to Define their Tradition and tell us what they mean by it before we dispute with them upon an ambiguous word seeing they are so divided among themselves that one party understands one thing by it and another another thing which we must not suffer these juglers to jumble together and confound 2. Another advantage in which we go beyond the Papists for Tradition is that as we argue not from the meer pretended supernatural Infallibility or Authority of any as they do but from rational Evidence of true Antiquity so we argue not from a sect or party as they do but from the Universal Church As far as the whole Church of Christ is of larger extent and greater credit then the Popish party so far is our Tradition more Credible then theirs And that is especially in three things 1. The Papists are fewer by far then the rest of the Christians in the world And the testimony of many yea of all is more then of a part 2. The Papists above other parties have espoused an interest that leads them to pretend and corrupt Tradition and bend all things to that interest of their own that they may Lord it over all the world But the whole Church can have no such Interest and Partiality 3. And the Papists are but one side and he that will judge rightly must hear the other sides speak too But the Tradition that we make use of is from all sides concurring yea Papists themselves in many points Yea our Tradition reacheth further then the Universal Church for we take in all rational Evidence even of Jews Heathens and Hereticks and Persecutors that bear witness to the matters of fact
Popes and Councils Their own Polidore Virgil de Inven. Rerum p. 410. lib 8. c. 4. calling us a Sect doth give you a just description of us Ita licentia pacta loquendi c. i. e. Having once got leave to speak that sect did marvailously increase in a short time which is called Evangelicall because they affirm that no Law is to be received which belongeth to salvation but what is given by Christ or the Apostles Mark what they confess themselves of our Religion And yet these very men have the face to charge us with Novelty as if Christ and his Apostles were not of sufficient Antiquity for them Our main quarrel with them is for adding new inventions in Religion and their principal business against us is to defend it and yet they call theirs the old Religion and ours the new Our Argument lieth thus That which is most conform to the Doctrine and Practice of Christ and his Apostles is the truly Antient Religion and Church But our Religion and Church is most conform to the doctrine and practice of the Apostles therefore it is the truly antient Religion and Church The Major they will yield For no older Religion is desirable further then as the Law of Nature and Moral Determinations of God are still in force I suppose they will not plead for Judaism For the Minor we lay our cause upon it and are ready to produce our evidence for the Conformity of our Religion and Churches to the doctrine and practice of the Apostles That Religion which is most conform to the Holy Scriture is most conform to the doctrine and practice of Christ and his Apostles But our Religion and Churches is most conform to the holy Scriptures therefore c. They can say nothing against the Major but that the Scripture is Insufficient without Tradition But for that 1. We have no Rule of faith but what is by themselves confessed to be true They acknowledge Scripture to be the true word of God So that the Truth of our Rule is Justified by themselves 2. Let them shew us as good Evidence that their Additional Articles of faith or Laws of life came from the Apostles as we do that the Scriptures came from them and then we shall confess that we come short of them Let them take the Controversies between us point by point and bring their proof and we will bring ours and let that Religion carry it that is Apostolicall But we are sure that by this means they will be proved Novelists For 1. Their Traditions in matter of faith superadded to the Scripture are meer Hereticall or Erroneous forgeries and they can give us no proof that ever they were Apostolicall 2. The Scripture affirmeth its own sufficiency and therefore excludeth their Traditions 3. I shewed you how in their own General Council at Basil the Scripture sufficiency was defended 4. I have shewed you in my Book called the Safe Religion that the ancient Fathers were for the sufficiency of Scripture 5. Their Traditions are the opinions of a dividing sect contrary to the Traditions or doctrine of the present Catholick Church the far greater part of Christians being against them 6. We are able to shew that the time was for some hundred years after Christ when most of their pretended Traditions were unknown or abhorred by the Christian Church and no such things were in being among them 7. And we can prove that the chief points of Controversie mantained against us are not only without Scripture but against it and from thence we have full particular evidence to disprove them If the Scriptures be true as they confess them to be then no Tradition can be Apostolicall or true that is contrary to them For example the Papists Tradition is that the Clergy is exempt from the Magistrates judgement But the holy Scripture saith Let every soul be subject to the higher power Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4 5. The Papists Tradition is for serving God publickly in an unknown tongue But the holy Scripture is fully against it Their Tradition is against Lay mens reading the Scripture in a known tongue without special License from their ordinary But Scripture and all antiquity is against them The like we may say of many other Controversies So that these seven wayes we know their Traditions to be deceitfull because they are 1. Unproved 2. Against the sufficiency of Scripture 3. Against their own former confessions 4. Against the concent of the Fathers 5. Contrary to the judgement of most of the Catholick Church 6. We can prove that once the Church was without them 7. And they are many of them contrary to express Scripture And if Scripture will but shew which of us is neerest the doctrine and practice of the Apostles then the controversie is ended or in a fair way to it For we provoke them to try the cause by Scripture and they deny it we profess it is the Rule and test of our Religion but they appeal to another Rule and test And thus you may see which is the old Religion which will be somewhat fullyer cleared in that which followeth II. And that our Church and Religion hath been continued from the dayes of Christ till now we prove thus 1. From the promise of Christ which cannot be broken Christ hath promised in his word that that Church and Religion which is most conform to the Scripture shall continue to the end But our Church and Religion is most conform to the Scripture therefore Christ hath promised that it shall continue to the end 2. From the event The Christian Religion and Catholick Church hath continued from the dayes of Christ till now But ours is the Christian Religion and Catholick Church therefore ours hath continued from the dayes of Christ till now The Major they will grant the Minor is proved by parts thus 1. That Religion which hath all the Essentials of Christianity and doth not deny or destroy any Essential part of it is the Christian Religion but such is ours therefore c. 2. That Religion which the Apostles were of is the Christian Religion But ours is the same that the Apostles were of therefore c. 3. That Religion which is neerer the Scripture then the Romish Religion is certainly the Christian Religion But so is ours therefore c. 4. They that believe not only all that in particular that is contained in the Ancient Creeds of the Church but also in generall all that is besides in the holy Scripture are of the Christian Religion But thus do the Reformed Churches believe c. 2. And for our Church 1. They that are of that one holy Catholick Church whereof Christ is the head and all true Christians are members are of the true Church For there is but one Catholick Church But so are we therefore c. 2. They that are Sanctified Justified have the love of God in them are members of the true Catholick Church But such are all that are sincere
Professors of our Religion therefore c. But all this will not serve them without a Catalogue and telling them where our Church was before Luther To this we further answer we have no peculiar Catholick Church of our own for there is but one and that is our Church Wherever the Christian Church was there was our Church And where-ever any Christians were congregate for Gods worship there were Churches of the same sort as our particular Churches And wherever Christianity was there our Religion was For we know no Religion but Christianity And would you have us give you a Catalogue of all the Christians in the world since Christ Or would you have us as vain as H. T. in his Manuall that names you some Popes and about twenty professors of their faith in each age as if twenty or thirty men were the Catholick Church Or as if those men were proved to be Papists by his naming them This is easie but silly disputing In a word Our Religion is Christianity 1. Christianity hath certain Essentials without which no man can be a Christian and it hath moreover many precious truths and duties necessary necessitate praecepti and also necessitate medii to the better being of a Christian Our being as Christians is in the former and our strength and increase and better-being is much in the latter From the former Religion and the Church is denominated Moreover 2. Our implicite and actuall explicite Belief as the Papists call them must be distinguished or our General and our particular Belief 3. And also the Positives of our Belief must be distinguished from the implyed Negatives and the express Articles themselves from their implyed Consectaries And now premising these three distinctions I shall tell you where our Church hath been in all Ages since the birth of Christ 1. In the dayes of Christ and his Apostles our Church was where they and all Christians were And our Religion was with them in all its parts both Essential and perfective That is we now Believe 1. All to be true that was delivered by the Apostles as from God with a General faith 2. We believe all the Essentials and as much more as we can understand with a Particular faith 3. But we cannot say that with such a particular faith we believe all that the Apostles believed or delivered for then we must say that we have the same degree of understanding as they and that we understand every word of the Scriptures 2. In the dayes of the A postles themselves the Consectaries and implied Verities and Rejections of all Heresies were not particularly and expresly delivered either in Scripture or Tradition as the Papists will confess 3. In the next ages after the Apostles our Church was the one Catholick Church containing all true Christians Headed by Jesus Christ and every such Christian too many to number was a member of it And for our Religion the Essential parts of it were contained both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Publick Professions Ordinances and Practices of the Church in those ages which you call Traditions and the rest of it even all the doctrines of faith and universal Laws of God which are its perfective parts they were fully contained in the holy Scriptures And some of our Rejections and Consectaries were then gathered and owned by the Church as Heresies occasioned the expressing of them and the rest were all implyed in the Apostolical Scripture doctrine which they preserved 4. By degrees many errors crept into the Church yet so that 1. Neither the Catholick Church nor one true Christian in sensu composito at least did reject any essential part of Christianity 2. And all parts of the Church were not alike corrupted with error but some more and some less 3. And still the whole Church held the holy Scripture it self and so had a perfect General or Implicite belief even while by evill consequences they oppugned many parts of their own profession 5. When in process of time by claiming the universall Soveraignty Rome had introduced a new pretended Catholick Church so far as their opinion took by superadding a New Head and form there was then a two fold Church in the West the Christian as Christian headed by Christ and the Papal as Papal Headed by the Pope yet so as they called it but one Church and by this usurped Monarchy as under Christ endeavoured to make but one of them by making both the Heads Essential when before one only was tolerable And if the Matter in any part may be the same and the same Man be a Christian and a Papist and so the same Assemblies yet still the forms are various and as Christians and part of the Catholick Church they are one thing and as Papists and members of the separating sect they are another thing Till this time there is no doubt of our Churches Visibility 6. In this time of the Romish Usurpation our Church was visible in three degrees in three severall sorts of persons 1. It was visible in the lowest degree among the Papists themselves not as Papists but as Christians For they never did to this day deny the Scriptures nor the Ancient Creeds nor Baptism the Lords Supper nor any of the substance of our Positive Articles of Religion They added a New Religion and Church of their own but still professed to hold all the old in consistency with it Wherever the truth of holy Scriptures and the ancient Creeds of the Church were professed there was our Religion before Luther But even among the Papists the holy Scriptures and the said Creeds were visibly professed therefore among them was our Religion And note here that Popery it self was not ripe for a corruption of the Christian faith professed till Luthers opposition heightned them For the Scripture was frequently before by Papists held to be a most sufficient Rule of faith as I shewed before from the Council of Basil and consequently Tradition was only pleaded as conservatory and expository of the Scripture but now the Council of Trent hath in a sort equalled them And this they were lately driven to when they found that out of Scripture they were unable to confute or suppress the truth 2. At the same time of the Churches oppression by the Papacy our Religion was visible and so our Church in a more illustrious sort among the Christians of the most of the world Greeks Ethiopians and the rest that never were subject to the usurpation of Rome but only many of them took him for the Patriarch primae sedis but not Episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae or the Governour of the Universall Church So that here was a visibility of our Church doubly more eminent then among the Romanists 1. In that it was the far greatest part of the Catholick Church that thus held our Religion to whom the Papists were then but few 2. In that they did not only hold the same Positive Articles of faith with us but also among their Rejections
such a Church and Ministry as they predicate and yet have no conjecture which it is As if they should believe that there is such a creature as the Moon but be not able to know it from the Stars The second sort of Seekers are to seek whether there be any Organized Political Church or any Ministry or any Ordinances proper to a Church at all or not Not denying them but Doubting and Seeking that so when they have found them at Rome they may prove but Finders and not gross changlings And withall they yield that private men may Declare the Word and pray together and read the Scripture The most rational and modest that hath wrote for this way is the Author of Asober Word to a Serious People A likely thing indeed it is that so rational a man should heartily believe that Christ hath planted so excellent a Ministry and Church and Ordinances as himself describeth and to those standing necessary uses which he mentioneth even instead of Christ to take men into the holy Covenant and yet that all should be left but for an Age or two and that ever since there is no such thing or at least no certainty of it The Stile shews us that this Author is no such dotard as to think as he speaks 3. Another sort of Seekers are those that do not only Doubt of but flatly deny any Ministry and Political Churches and Church-ordinances on Earth as things that are lost in an Universal Apostacy 4. Another sort of Seekers do not only doubt of or deny these Particular Churches and Ordinances but also they are to seek for the Universal Church it self and the holy Scriptures yea many of them not only Questioning them but flatly maintaining that we have no certainty that the Scripture is true or that we have the same that was written by the Apostles or that there is such a thing as true Ministry or State of Christianity in the World Hence it is that some of them pour out so many reproaches against the Ministry and the Holy Scriptures as you may find in Clem. Writer in two ignorant Pamphlets that have scorn in the very Titles as well as through the bulk one called The Jus Divinum of Presbyterie and the other Fides Divina In which he maintaineth the cause of the Infidels The opinion which this sort of men openly profess is that no particular man is bound to believe the Gospel but those that have themselves seen Miracles to confirm it and therefore in the first ages when Miracles were wrought those that saw them were bound to believe in Christ and at the second coming of Christ when again he shall be witnessed by Miracles it will again become a duty to be Christians but not to others that see no Miracles however they may hear of them This doctrine Clem. Writer hath professed to me with his own mouth But I may not censure him to be so weak as to believe himself It 's possible that such a silly soul may be found that shall think that Christ came into the world to set up Christianity as the true Religion for those only in an Age or two or more that saw Miracles but it 's unlikely that a man that hath any considerable use of his reason should be so silly Who will not despise Christ that thinks he came on so low a design Who would not be an Infidel that thinks ten thousand Infidels are saved for one Christian Yea who can be himself a Christian that thinks that he is not bound to be a Christian because he sees not Miracles It 's most evident therefore that this is but a Juggle and that such are either Infidels or Papists Infidelity is the thing professed and therefore that we take them for Infidels they cannot blame us But yet in Charity I hope and not without cause that some of this Profession are but Papists though others I have found to be desperate Infidels A fifth sort called Seekers also there are that own the Church and Ministery and Ordinances but yet suppose themselves above them for they think that these are but the Administrations of Christ to men in the passage to a higher state and that such as have received the Spirit and have the Law once written in their hearts are under as they call it the second Covenant and so are past the lower form of Ordinances Scripture Ministery and visible Churches And a sixth sort of Seekers there are that think the whole company of believers should now be over-grown the Scripture Ministry and Ordinances For they think that the Law was the Fathers Administration and the Gospel Ministry and Sacraments are the Sons Administration and that both these are now past and the season of the Spirits Administration is come which all must attend and quit the lower forms The David-Georgians were the chief that taught the world this lesson their Leader taking himself to be the Holy Ghost All these sorts of Seekers are bred or cherished by the Jesuites and Fryars And the truth is when a man is made a Seeker he is half made a Papist As a Dog when he hath lost his Master will follow almost any body that will whistle him so when men have lost their Ministry Church and Religion they are easily allured to the Church of Rome For they are a body as conspicuous to a carnal eye as any other And who will not rather be of the Roman Church and Religion then of none 4. Another sort of Hiders are the Quakers an impudent Generation and open enough in pulling down but as secret and reserved as the rest in asserting and building up What interests the Papists have in breeding and feeding this Sect among us hath been partly proved from the Oaths of Witnesses and Confessions of Fryars and somewhat I have spoken of it in three several Papers against them The Doctrine of this fourth sort is the same or scarse discernable from the rest 5. A fifth sort of Hiders are those Enthusiasts that shun the affected bombasted language of Behmen and such like but yet give us much of the body of Popery Headed by an infallible Prophetick Spirit instead of the Pope Such as the Authors of the Book against the Assemblies Confession owned by Parker but said to be written by a London Doctor And many such Doctors I know and hear of abroad in England They take on them to be adversaries to the Pope but they are friends to his Doctrines and maintain the necessity of an infallible living Judge and send us to Prophets for this infallible judgement And could the Papists bring men once to this it 's an easie matter to strike off the the feigned Prophetick head by disgracing such as meer fantasticks and to set on the ancient Papal Head which only will agree with the Body which they have received So much of the Libertines and the Hiders of their Religion of several sorts 3. Another sort that are spawned by the Papists are stark
is nothing else but the increase and exaggeration of sins in those who are perverse and the decrease and diminution of them in those who amend And pag. 90. that the defect of Gods honour occasioned by Peter was not supplyed and repaired by any other and so not by Christ And pag. 146. that Gods aim is alwayes the utmost good of every creature And he oft enough tels us that God attaineth all his will And is this man a Papist or are Papists in good sadness that tell the world that none but the subjects of the Pope can be saved and yet now the number that perish will be inconsiderable and God aimeth at the utmost Good of every creature Sure he thinks that all the Toads must be made men and all men made Angels and every star must be made a Sun I shall pass by the Books that are written against the Creation and against Scripture and against Hell c. which swarm among us only advising your Highness to take heed that you venture not upon any worldly motives to stand guilty before the living God of allowing or tolerating such Books to be published and such doctrines as these to be preached to your People to the everlasting undoing of their precious souls If you ask who it is that presumeth thus to be your Monitor It is one that serveth so great a Master that he thinks it no unwarrantable presumption in such a case to be faithfully plain with the greatest Prince It is one that stands so neer Eternity where Lazarus shall wear the Crown that unfaithfull man-pleasing would be to him a double crime it is one that rejoyceth in the present happiness of England and earnestly wisheth that it were but as well with the rest of the world and that honoureth all the providences of God by which we have been brought to what we are but dare not own all the actions of men that have been the Instruments as he hath thought meet to manifest in this writing and leave upon record And he is one that concurring in the Common Hopes of greater Blessings yet to these Nations under your Government and observing your Acceptance of the frequent Addresses that from all parts of the Land are made unto you was encouraged to do what you dayly allow your Preachers to do and to concur with the rest in the tenders and some performance of his service and particularly the County of Wilts who have Petitioned you for the Summ of what I have here exprest and whose Petitions I desire may be written upon your heart That the Lord will make you a healer and preserver of his Chucrhes here at home and a successfull helper to his Churches abroad is the earnest prayer of Your Highnesses faithfull Subject Rich. Baxter Reader IF thou come hither with a practical esteem of Truth desiring to know it that thou maist obey it with an humble mind dost study and pray to the Father of Lights and art impartially willing to receive the Truth in the Love of it that thou maist be saved and with diligence and meekness to read and weigh the Evidences that I bring thee thou art then the person to whom I recommend these Papers with confident expectation of success The Controversies here handled are those that have made and still are making the greatest comhustions in the Christian world And yet to almost all men of learning on both sides they seem exceeding easie I seldom meet with a Learned Protestant but taketh Popery for such transparent fallacies that he is little or no whit troubled with any doubtings in the business And I seldom meet with a Learned Papist but is as confident on the other side as if besides them all the Christian world were blind and mad Interest and prejudice must needs do much then on one side at least And which side hath the greatest worldly interest to by as their understanding is soon discerned by one that knows the Papalpower their Cardinals Prelates and the Riches Honours and priviledges of their Clergy and that knows our state And if thou wilt hear the Reasons of the confidence of both sides I will tell it thee here as briesly and plainly as I can We are confident of our own Religion because we believe the Gospel and we have no other Rule and Iest of our Religion And we are confident that Popery is a deceit because we both believe the Gospel and the judgement of the ancient and present Churches and because we believe our sense it self As sure as we know Bread from Flesh and Wine from Blood by seeing tasting c. so sure know we that Popery is false And if a Controversie is not at an End when it is brought to the judgement of all the senses of all the sound men in the world it being about the object of sense then we are past hope of ending controversies And therefore as we will not waste our time with every fellow that will dispute with us that Snow is black or the Fire cold no more will we trouble our selves with these men that tell us that Bread is not bread and Wine is not wine And if you would know the Reasons of the confidence of the Papists I know no more of them but what their Writings and speeches do express and those I have hereafter given you Two things they are still harping on the first is that in our way we have no assurance that the Christian Religion is true or that Scripture is the word of God Save me the labour of repetitions and read but what I have witten in the Preface to the second Part of the Saints Rest Edit 2. c. where I give you the Resolution of our faith and in my Safe Religion Disp 3. and then believe them if thou canst Their second is that thred-bare Question Where was your Church before Luther Where hath it been successively in each age And here meer Sophistry carryeth it through the Papal world to the deluding of the simple that will be catcht with chaffe and are not able to see things for Names I have dealt with some of them that harped on this string and never met with any thing from them that should seem considerable to a discerning man save only the two unanswerable arguments of Confidence that I say not Impudence and Loquacity Though I have more fully shamed this Question in this Book I will here also give you at the entrance a short view of the case The men that ask us where our Church and Religion was either know not through ignorance or will not let others know through wickedness what our Church and Religion is Shew us say they a Church in all ages that held the thirty nine Articles or that held all that the Protestants hold or else they were not Protestants Forsooth we must receive from them a Definition of a Protestant and then we must prove the succession of such Know therefore before you dispute about the succession
Believed in this our own Profession as well as you are in yours when you make the Decrees of Popes and Councils to be your Law and Rule and Tests We perform therefore more then you demand You ask us Where was our Church before Luther And we answer Where our Religion was You ask us Where was that and we tell you Where ever the Christian Religion was and the Holy Scriptures were received This were enough for us in answer to your Question But we do more We tell you not only where our Church and Religion was but where there were men that owned not your grand Corruptions no more then we What can you demand more of us when you call for a succession of Protestants then that we tell you of a succession of Christians which are of our Religion and which were no Papists yea against Popery which therefore were of our integrity And who knoweth not that the foresaid Abassines Armenians Egyptians Greeks c. are against your Papal Soveraignty Infallibility and all that is by us renounced as Essential to Popery O but say the Juglers these are not Protestants they differ from you in many particulars I answer Call them by what name you please they are not only Christians but also Anti-papists or free from Popery and then they are of our Religion and Church But indeed must the world be made believe that all that we Believe is essential to our Religion and that no man that differeth from us can be of our Religion be the difference never so small But say they tell us of a Church that professes your 39 Articles Silly deceivers Do not those very Articles profess that The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation so that whatever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith or be thought requsite or necessary to Salvation Art 6. We never took these Articles instead of the Scripture but the Articles and all Protestants profess the Scripture to be the only Rule and Test of their Faith and Religion The substance of the 39 Articles may easily be proved to have been successively held by the Church from the beginning but it is not incumbent on us to prove that every word in the writings of every Divine or Church hath been so continued no more then you will own the writings of any Divines or Provincial Synods of your own as being the Rule of your Faith As you profess that the Decrees of Popes and general Councils approved by him besides the Scriptures are the Rule and Test of your Religion so do we profess that the Scriptures alone with the Law of Nature is the Rule of ours But what say they will you be of the same Church with Nestorians Eutichians and other Hereticks I Answ 1. We will not take all for Nestorians or Eutichians that a railer can call such that never knew them nor can prove it 2. Hereticks indeed that deny any essential part of Christianity are no Christians anh therefore none of the Church that we are of but if you will call those Hereticks that have all the essentials of Christianity because they err in lesser points we know that there are such in the Catholick Church We will be none of them our selves if we can escape it yet indeed have no hope of escaping all error till we are perfect in knowledge But we will not run out of the family of God because there are children and sick persons in it Nor will we for sake the Catholick Church because there are erring persons in it O but saith the Papist We acknowledge not your distinction of points Essential and not Essential all points of Faith are Essential with us and of necessity to Salvation Answ Reader thou shalt see here such impudent and faithless jugling as may make thee blush to think that Christianity hath such professors 1. The Outside of their assertion damneth no aess then all the world that live to the use of Reason 2. The Inside of their deceitful meaning is almost clean contrary and leaveth Heathens and Infidels in the Church or in a state of salvation as well as Christians 3. It leaveth no one Article of faith essential to a Christian or to one that shall be saved and leaveth the Church an Invisible thing clean contrary to their own assertions of its Visibility 4. And when they have thus wrangled themselves into a wood of contradictions and Unchristian absurdities the wisest of them say as we say in the main point All this I will now manifest to thee 1. The Out-side of their assertion is that Every point that we are bound to belive by a Divine faith is fundamental or essential to Christian faith or of necessity to salvation And if so then no man breathing can be saved For no man knoweth all that he is bound to know And no man believeth that which he understandeth not It is impossible to believe that such a Proposition is a truth distinctly and actually when I understand not what the Proposition is And that we all know but in part even what we are obliged to know no man will deny but he that is mad by pride or faction All that God hath revealed in his word is the matter of our faith There is to man can say I have no culpable ignorance of any one Truth of God that I should believe Had we been more perfect in our diligent studies and prayers and use of all means and had we never sinfully grieved the spirit that should illuminate us to say nothing of our Original sinfull darkness there is not one of us but might have known more then we do If sin of the will and life be consistent with true faith then some sin in the understanding is consistent with faith But the former is true therefore c. But according to the out-side of their doctrine no man that hath any sinfull ignorance and consequently unbelief in his understanding can be saved that is no man in the world If he that thinks he knowth any thing knoweth nothing as he ought to know 1 Cor. 8. 2. what shall be said of these men that think they and all the Church do know all things that they ought to know and that their understandings have no sin And must we needs be of that faith that damneth all men and of that Church where none are saved 2. As the Out-side of their Assertions is made for a bug-bear to frighten fools so that the In-side as expounded by many of them is that Heathens and Infidels may be of their Church or saved and that nothing of the Chrian faith at all is necessary to salvation is plain For they ' tell us that they mean that all points are of necessity where they are sufficiently proposed and mens ignorance is not invincible but where there is no sufficient proposal but mens ignorance is invincible or
and the unholiness of ours And 1. Of their Canonized Saints p. 214 217. 2. Of the strictness of their Religious Orders 3. Of their unmarryed Clergie p. 227. 4. Their Holy Ceremonies Chap. 35. Detect 26. Their demanding of us to tell them when every one of their Corruptions did begin p. 233. Their Novelty proved p. 234 c. A Confutation of a Papists M. S. on this point which was sent to Mr. Millard neer Sturbridge p. 244. Chap. 36. Detect 27. They charge us with New Articles for denying their new Articles of Faith and then bid us prove the Succession of our Negatives p. 258. Chap. 37. Detect 28. They conclude that theirs is the safer Religion because it is most uncharitable and damneth others and ours the less safe because the more charitable p. 261. They admit or save Heathens while they would damn Protestants proved p. 265. Chap. 38. Detect 29. They win the Great ones and multitude by suiting their Doctrine and Worship to the fleshly conceits and inclinations of ungodly men p. 271. shewed in twenty instances Chap. 39. Detect 30. They pick up the mistakes or harsh passages of some particular Divines and perswade men that these are the Protestant Religion p. 279. A Confutation of Cardinal Richlieu's twelve Accusations or Arguments against the Protestants p. 280 281 c. Chap. 42. Detect 33. Their pretence of a Divine institution and Natural Excellency of a visible Monarchical Government of the whole Church Detected p. 297. An Answer to the ridiculous Reasons of Cardinal Boverius to Prince Charles p. 297. Chap. 43. Detect 34. Their new device of receiving nothing as Scripture Evidence but the express words p 307. Chap. 44. Detect 35. They choose such persons to dispute with against whom they have some notable advantage p. 312. Chap. 45. Detect 36. Their designs to divide us or sow Heresies among the Vulgar and then draw them to some odious practices p. 313. About our late changes and warres and Heresies in England The Protestants and particularly the Presbyterians vindicated from their charge of killing the late King p. 321. Yet the case different from theirs p. 323. How Papists have crept into most parties p. 327. What Heresies and Sects are their proper spawn p. 330. Chap. 46. Detect 37. They Hide themselves in their Agents and new Converts The means Our danger by the Hiders The Detection p. 337. to 345. Chap. 47. Detect 38. Their exceeding industry to pervert men of Interest and power p. 345. Chap. 48. Detect 39. Their Treasons against the lives of Princes and the Peace of Nations and their dissolving the bond of Oaths and Covenants and making Perjury and Rebellion to seem Duties and Meritorius p. 348. proved from themselves their recrimination about the late Kings death further refelled p. 355. Chap. 49. Detect 40. Their last course is to turn to open Hostility and stir up Princes to war and blood p. 356. Chap. 50. Some Proposals to the Papists for a Hopeless Peace p. 364. The Contents of the Second Part. Quest WHether the way to heal the Divisions in the Churches of Christ be by drawing them all into One Universal Visible Political body under One Universal visible Head or Government Or whether the Catholick Church be a body so United and Governed Neg. Chap. 1. Shewing the Occasions and reasons of this writing especially as from the Grotians Mr. Pierce's exceptions manifested to be frivelous p. 379. Grotius speaking English to gratifie Mr. Pierce p. 383. Chap. 2. The true state of the Controversie and what Consociations of Pastors and union of Churches we grant p. 394. Chap. 3. Our Arguments for the Negative Fifteen Reasons against the Popes Soveraignty briefly named p. 402. Against the Headship of Pope or General Councils Argum 1. From the non-existence of an universal Head p. 404. Argum. 2. It never did exist much less in continued succession p. 406. Argum. 3. A General Council unnecessary impossible and would be unjust p. 409. proved to p. 421. Argum. 4. If assembled it could not possibly do the work of the Head or Soveraign p. 421. Argum. 5. None hath power to summon a General Council p. 421. Argum. 6. Pope nor Council have not the Legislative Power to the Church Universal p. 423. Argum. 7. Pope nor Council are not the Fountain of Power to all Church-officers p. 425. Argum. 8. In great Causes all may not appeal to them nor can they finally decide p. 425. Argum. 9. They cannot put down other inferior officers through the world p. 426. Argum. 10. 11. Our Relation to such a Head not Essential to our Christianity nor are we baptized into such a Head p. 127. Argum. 12. This Head no Principle anciently taught the Catechized p. 428. Argum. 13. 14. It is no Treason or damning sin to deny this Head Nor are all Christians bound to study the Laws of Popes and Councils p. 428 429. Argum. 15. 16. The Head of the Church must be evident to all the members and his Laws certain p. 430. Argum. 17. 18. Councils and Decretals must not be usually preached A Visible Head not agreed on among Papists and therefore as none p. 431. Argum. 19. No such Head revealed in Scripture p. 432. Argum. 20. The Scripture appropriates the Soveraignty to Christ only p. 433. Proved and the Objections answered Chap. 4. Opening the true grounds on which the Churches Unity and Peace must be sought and the means that must be used to attain so much as is here to be expected 1. The General Grounds p. 440. The true particular Grounds of Peace in twenty Propositions p. 442. What unity to be here expected p. 443. The Applications of the foresaid Grounds or the reduction of them into practice p. 453. The Conclusion p. 455. ERRATA PAge 24. l. 9. r. Platina p. 30. l. 9. r. Formosus p. 31. l. 19. r. Cardinals p. 58. l. 13. r. mean time p. 59. l. 5. 16. r. Filiutius l. 9. 25. r. Bauny l. 13. r. a man may do p. 61. l. 7. r. Baldellus l. 23. r. Escobar p. 78. l. 15. blot out too p. 82. l. 3 blot out not p. 104. l. 15. for reasoned r. ceased p. 126. l. penult for of r. take p. 131. l. penult r. Vignerius p. 134. l. 36. for five Acts r. the fifth Act. p. 145. l. 9. r. to receive so many l. 19. r. when he hath p. 157. l. 34. for Jus r. Jos p. 170. l. 9. for which r. with p. 195. l. 35. for this r. his p. 196. l. 36. r. Baldwin p. 206. l. 27. for of r. or l. 28. for Dr. r. D. p. 213. l. 7. r. when we do p. 220. l. 36. r. Dan tes p. 224. l. 2. 3 4. r. the names in the Accus case p. 225. l. 8. r. your self p. 259. l. 31. r. Anathema's p. 261. l. 35. r. not for nor p. 266. l. 17. r. that it is l. 28. r. Canus p. 267. l. 10. r. to
Columbanus the Abbot coming into France that the Scots do nothing differ from the Brittains in their Conversation For Bishop Daganus coming to us refused not only to eat with us but even to eat in the same House where we did eat Usher Epist Hibern 7. p. 18. Our most peaceable Bishop Hall was forct to write a Roma irreconciliabilis While we are thinking of Reconciliation they are about our ears with Plots and violence and with swarms of Rome-bred Sects and are day and night industriously undermining us so that by their continual Alarms I am called off to these defensive wars which here I have undertaken yet still resolving that the Desperateness of the Cure shall not make me run from them into a contrary extream nor be out of the way of Peace nor neglect any necessary means how hopeless soever of success The Work that here I have undertaken is 1. To give you briefly those Grounds on which you must go if you will keep your ground against a Papist 2. To give a few invincible Arguments which the weakest may be able to use to overthrow the principal grounds of the Papists 3. To detect their Frauds and give to the younger sort of Ministers sufficient Directions for the Confutation of all the Papists in the world 4. To propound though in vain such terms of Peace as we can yield to CHAP. II. BEfore I mention the Grounds or Cause that you must maintain I must premise this Advice to the Common People 1. Wrong not the Truth and your selves by an unequal conflict Enter not rashly upon Disputes with those that are Learned and of nimble tongues if you be ignorant or of weak capacities your selves Though I shall here shew you that Scripture Church Tradition Reason and Sense are on your side yet experience tels us how the words of Juglers have made millions of men deny belief to their eyes their taste and other senses An ignorant man is soon silenced by a subtile wit and many think that when they cannot answer they must yield though they deny both Sense and Reason by it If any of them secretly entice you desire them to debate the case with some able learned experienced Minister in your hearing It is the office of your Pastors to defend you from the wolves If you once despise them or straggle from them and the Flocks and trust to your own Reason that is unfurnished and unprepared for such work you may take that you get by it if you be undone You need the help of Pastors for your souls as well as of Physicians for your Bodies and Lawyers for your Estates or else God would never have set them over you in his Church Let them but come on equal terms and you shall see what Truth can do In this way we will not avoid a Conference with any of them But alas with ignorant unlearned people what may not such Deceivers do that can perswade so many thousand souls to give no Credit to their own eyes or taste or feeling but to believe a Priest that Bread is not Bread and Wine is not Wine 2. Yet I would have the weakest to endeavour to understand the reasons of their Profession and to be able to repell Deceivers And to that end I shall here give you first some Directions concerning the cause which you must defend And concerning this Observe these things following 1. Understand what the Religion is that you must hold and maintain It is the antient Christian Religion Do not put every Truth among the Essentials of your Religion Our Religion doth not stand or fall with every Controversie that is raised about it That which was the true Religion in the Apostles days is ours now that which all were baptized into the Profession of and the Churches openly held forth as their Belief Reformation brings us not a new Religion but cleanseth the old from the dross of Popery which by innovation they had brought in A man that cannot confute a Papist may yet be a Christian and so hold fast the true Religion It followeth not that our Religion is questionable or unsafe if some point in Controversie between them and us be questionable or hard The Papists would fain bring you to believe that our Religion must lie upon some of these Controversies but it s no such matter Perhaps you will say That then it is not about Religion that we differ from them I answer yes it is about the Essentials of their Religion but it is but for the preserving the Integrity of ours against the Consequences and additions of theirs They have made them a New Religion which we call Popery and joined this to the Old Religion which we call Christianity Now we stick to the old Religion alone and therefore there is more essential to their Religion then is to ours so that our own Religion even the ancient Christianity is out of Controversie between us The Papists do confess that the Creed the Lords Prayer the ten Commandments are true yea that all the Scripture is the word of God and certainly true so that our Religion is granted us as past dispute And therefore it is only the Papists Religion that is in question between us and not ours If you will make those lower Truths to be of the Essence of your Religion which are not you will give the Papists the advantage which they desire 2. If the Papists call for a Rule or Test of your Religion and ask you where they may find it assign them to the Holy Scriptures and not to any Confessions of Churches further then as they agree with that We know of no Divine Rules and Laws of Faith and Life but the holy Scripture and the hearts of Believers have an imperfect Transcript of them The Confessions of Churches are but part of the Holy Scripture or Collections out of them containing the points of greatest weight And if in phrase or order much more in matter there be any thing humane we make it not our Rule nor are we bound to make it good no more then the Writings of godly men A point is not therefore with us an Article of Faith because our Churches or a Synod put it into a Confession but because it is in the Word of God For a Councils determinations do with us differ but gradually from the Judgement of a single man in this respect And therefore we give them the Scripture only as the full Doctrine of our Faith and the perfect Law of God And those points in it which Life or Death is laid upon and God hath told us we cannot be saved without we take as the Essentials of our Religion and the rest as the Integrals only If they ask Why then we do draw up Confessions of Faith I answer 1. To teach and help the people by gathering to their hands the most necessary points and giving them sometimes an explication of them 2. To let our Accusers see that we misunderstand not the
false So that here we must break with a Papist even where we might join in dispute with a heathen And how will Papists deal with Heathens if they will deny the proofs from sense and reason 3. But will they stand to the Validity of Proofs from Scripture No For 1. They take it to be but part of Gods word so that we may nor argue Negatively It is not in the holy Scripture therefore it is not an Article of faith or a Law of God For they will presently appeal to Tradition 2. And even so much as is in Scripture though they confess it to be true yet they confess it not to be by us intelligible and will not admit of any proof from it but with this limitation that you take it in that sense as the Church takes it For they are sworn by the Trent Oath to take it in that sence as the Holy Mother Church doth hold and hath held it in and never to take or interpret it but according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers So that they must know what sense all the Fathers are unanimous in before they can admit a proof from Scripture And before that can be done above a Cart-load of books must be read over or searched and when that 's done they will find that most texts were never medled with by most of those Fathers in their writings and in those that they did meddle with they disagreed in multitudes and where they disagree they are not unanimous and there the Papists are sworn to believe no sense at all And if they would have come down to a Major vote it is no short or easie matter to gather the votes And if they know the Fathers unanimous consent yet must they have the sense of the present Church too And is it not all one to make your adversary the Judge of your cause as the Judge of your Evidences and all your proofs 4. Well but at least may we not hope that they will stand to the Judgement of the Catholick Church And if so we will not take it for our adversary No they will not do so neither For 1. When they deny proof from sense and reason they must needs deny all that 's brought from the Church For the Church cannot judge it self but on supposition of the infallibility of sense 2. And when you argue from the judgement and practice of the greater part of the Church they presently disclaim them all as Hereticks or Schismaticks and will have no man be a Valid witness but themselves The Greeks the Aethiopians the Armenians the Protestants all are Hereticks or Schismaticks save they and therefore may not be witnesses in the case So that you see upon what terms we stand with the Papists that will admit of no proofs upon the Infallibility of Sense or Reason or the sufficiency of Scripture or the testimony of the Catholick Church but only from themselves CHAP. XIII Detect 4 UNderstand what the Papists mean when they are still calling to you for a Judge of Controversies If you would dispute with them they are presently asking you Who shall be the judge and perswading you that it is in vain to dispute without a living Judge for every man will be the Judge himself and every mans cause will be right in his own eyes and all the world will be still at odds till we are agreed who shall be the Judge To help you to see the sense of this deceit and then to confute it 1. You may easily observe that this is the plain drift of all to perswade you to make them your judges and yield the cause instead of disputing it For it is no other judge but themselves that they will admit Yield first that the Pope or his Council is the judge of all controversies and then its folly to dispute against them so that if you will yield them the cause first they will then dispute with you after 2. But what is to be said to the pretence of the Necessity of a Judge I answer 1. It s against all reason and experience to think that all enquiries or disputes are vain unless there be a Judge to decide the case A Judge is a Ruling decider not to satisfie mens minds so much as to preserve Order and Peace and Justice in the Society But there are thousands of cases to be privately discussed that we never need to bring to a Judge Every Husbandman and Tradesman and Navigator and other Artificer doth meet with doubts and difficulties in his way which he laboureth to Discern and satisfieth himself with a Judgement of Discretion without a Ruling Judge We eat and drink and clothe our selves and follow our daily labours without a Judge though we meet with controversies in almost all what meat or drink is best for quality or quantity and a hundred like doubts Men do marry and build and buy and sell and take Physick and dispatch their greatest worldly business without a Judge Judges are only for such controverted cases as cannot well be decided without them to the attaining of the Ends of Government 2. Is it not against the daily practice of the Papists to think or say that all disputes and controversies must have a Judge Who is the Judge between the Nominals Reals and Formalists the Dominicans Franciscans and Jesuites in all those controversies which have Cartloads of Books written on them Their Pope or Councils dare not Judge between them Do they not daily dispute in their Schools among themselves without a Judge and still write books against one another without a Judge 3. Understand well the use and differences of Judgement The sentence is but a means to the execution and Judges cannot determine the mind and will of man but preserve outward Order if men will not see the truth themselves Me thinks the Jesuits that are so eager for free will should easily grant that the Pope by his definition cannot determine the Will of man And they see that Hereticks remain Hereticks when the Pope hath said all that he can And if he can cure them all by his determinations he is much too blame that he doth not And if a mans mind be to be settled an Infallible Teacher is fitter then a Judge Judgement then being for Execution when you ask Who shall be the Judge I answer that Judgement is either total absolute and final or it is only to a certain particular end limited and subordinate from which there is an Appeal In the former case there is no Judge but Christ and the Father by him No absolute decision can be made till the great Judgement come and then all will be fully and finally decided And for the limited present Judgements of men they are of several sorts according to their several Ends. When the question is Who shall be corporally punished as an Heretick the Magistrate is Judge For coercive punishment being his work the Judgement must be his also But when the question is Who
it it is not Simony though he that resigns do look at the money as his Principal end and so Tannerus p. 115. But the Jansenists think otherwise Father Gaspar Hurtado saith that an Incumbent may without mortal sin wish the death of him that hath a pension out of his living and a son his fathers death and may rejoyce when it happens so it proceed only from a consideration of the advantage accrewing to him thereby and not out of any personal hatred pag. 136. But the Jansenists believe not this Layman the Jesuit and Pet. Hurtado thinks that a man may lawfully fight a duell accepting the challenge to defend his honour or estate Pag. 138. But the Jansenist thinks otherwise Sanchez and Navarrus allow a man to murder his adversary secretly or dispatch him at unawares to avoid the danger of a duell p. 140. And Molina thinks you may kill one that wrongfully informs against us in any Court and Reginaldus that you may kill the false witnesses which the prosecutor brings And Tannerus and Emanuel Sa that you may kill both witnesses and judge which conspire the death of an innocent person But so think not the Jansenists Henriquez saith one man may kill another who hath given him a box on the ear though he run away for it provided he do it not out of hatred or revenge and that by that means a gap be open for excessive murther destructive to the State And the reason is a man may as well do it in pursuance of his reputation as his goods and he that hath had a box on the ear is accounted dishonourable till he hath killed his enemy And Azorius saith Is it lawfull for a person of quality to kill one that would give him a box on the ear or a bang with a stick some say not But others affirm it lawfull and for my part I think it probable when it cannot be avoided otherwise For if it were not the reputation of innocent persons were still exposed to the insolency of the malicious pag. 142 143 144. many other are of the same mind in so much that Father Lessius saith It is lawfull by the consent of all Casuists to kill him that would give a box on the ear or a blow with a stick when a man cannot otherwise avoid it p. 145. Father Boldellus saith It is lawfull to kill him that saith to you thou lyest if a man cannot right himself otherwise And Lessius saith If you endeavour to ruine my reputation by opprobrious speeches before persons of honour and that I cannot avoid them otherwise then by killing you may I do it According to modern Authors I may nay though the crime you lay to my charge be such as I am really guilty of it being supposed to have been so secretly committed that you cannot discover it by ways of justice T is proved if when you would take away my reputation by giving me a box on the ear it is in my power to prevent it by force of arms the same defence is certainly lawfull when you would do me the same injury with your tongue Besides a man may avoid the affront of those whose ill language he cannot hinder In a word honour is more precious then life but a man may kill in defence of his life ergo he may kill in defence of his honour pag. 146. But the Jansenists are against all this Escombar saith that regularly it is lawfull to kill a man for the value of a crown according to Molina p. 151. Father Amicus saith It is lawfull for a Church-man or a Religious man to kill a detractor that threatens to divulge the scandalous crimes of his community or himself when there is no other means left to hinder him from doing it as if he be ready to scatter his calumnes if not suddenly dispatched out of the way p. 152 153. And Caramovel in his Fundamental Theologie takes it for certain and thence concludes that a Priest not only may kill a detractor on certain occasions but sometimes ought to do it And yet the peevish Jansenist believeth none of this But I must stop you may read in the said Jansenians Mysterie of Jesuitism a volumn of such passages of the Jesuites allowing men to give and receive the Sacrament when they come that day from Adultery and allowing a man to eat and drink as much as he can with his health and discharging men from a Necessity of Loving God unless it be once in their lives or as others say upon Holy-daies or as Hurtado de Mendoza once a year or as Conink once in three or four years or as Henriquez once in five years or as Anthon. Sirmond not at all so we do not hate him and do obey his other commands with abundance more Now Reader I would here leave it to thy consideration whether all these differences among the Papists are so small as to be no matters of faith And I intreat you to read over the forementioned Book the Mysterie of Jesuitism and then judge whether Papists or the Reformed Catholicks are more at unity among themselves Well! but suppose the loving of God the avoiding murder bribery and the like be no matter of faith at Rome yet I have not done with them so I desire to know whether the holy Scripture be matter of faith or not They dare not deny but it is Well! and what is the Scripture but the words ut signa and the sense or matter ut res significata And are the Papists agreed among themselves about either of these no For the words it s well known how some of the best Learned of them have stood for the preheminence of the Hebrew and Greek Texts and others and the most for the vulgar Latine And that vulgar Latine Translation hath been altered and altered again by them And after many others comes Pope Sixtus the fift and makes it so compleat that the Church is required to use his Edition yet after him comes Pope Clement the eighth and mends it in many hundred if not thousand places and imposes this upon the Church which of these Popes was Infallible I am sure they much differ in their Translations And for the sense of scripture though men must swear to take Scripture in the Churches sense yet will not any Pope or Council to this day tell us the sense of them either by giving us an infallible Commentary or by deciding the many thousand differences that are among their Commentators Do not all these Commentators forswear themselves having sworn those that lived since the Council of Trent to expound Scripture in the sence of the Church and only according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers And why doth not the Pope decide these controversies seing it is their happiness to have such a Judge of Controversies to keep them all of a mind But perhaps they will say that all these Scriptures be not matters of faith No! where are we then what is matter of
faith if Scripture be not And if all be not how shall we know which is But at least tell us Is no one of all those many hundred or thousand Texts which your Commentators differ about any matter of Faith If not then sure you have no Faith If it be then surely the Papists differ among themselves in matters of Faith It is not a few Texts that Lyra's excepter and Burgensis differ about to name no more And of the foresaid Editions of the Bible by Pope Sixtus and Clement see Dr. Jame's Bellum Papale vel Concordia discors CHAP. XVI Detect 7. BY what hath been said you may discern how to deal with them when they would industriously confound the Essentials and the Integral parts of our Faith for this is another of their juglings They cannot endure to hear us distinguish the fundamentals that is the Essentials of our Religion from the rest and therefore they call out to us for a Catalogue of our fundamentals and would perswade us that whatsoever is matter of faith is of Necessity to salvation to be believed and those are damnable Hereticks that deny them and therefore we must not make any such difference See Knot against Chillingworth Their design in this is to perswade people that the world must be wholly of their mind in matters of faith or else they cannot be saved And by this trick they would prove that the Protestants and many other Churches are all Hereticks and therefore have no place in General Councils and are no parts of the Catholick Church But let us consider how judiciously they proceed 1. We must desire the Papists to tell us whether Christianity be any thing or nothing If any thing it hath its Essence and 2. Whether this Essence of Christianity be Knowable or not If not then they cannot know a Christian from another and they cannot know the Church from other Societies If it be knowable then its Essence must needs be knowable 3. And we would be informed by them whether all true Christians in the world are of the same stature or degree of knowledge and explicite belief If they be then there 's no difference between Fathers and Babes Strong and Weak Priest and People and then the Jesuites have no more Knowledge or Faith then the simplest woman of their Church but if there be a difference then 4. We would know whether the Essence of Christianity be varyed according to these degrees If so then there are as many sorts of Christianity in the world as there be degrees of Faith which they have more wit I suppose then to affirm If not then the Essence of Christianity is distinguishable from the Integrity or superadded Degrees which is the thing that we contend for 5. We desire also to know whether the Apostles did not go on to teach their people more after they had made them Christians in a state of salvation And whether the Priests Fryers and Jesuits will give men up and teach them nothing more when they have made them Christians I know they will say There 's more to be taught And if so then the Essentials of Christianity are distinguishable from the Integrals or Degrees 6. And we would know else how they will understand that in Heb. 5. 10 11 12 14. and 6. 1 2. For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the Oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness for he is a babe But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil therefore leaving the Principles of the doctrine of Christ let us go on to perfection not laying again the foundation c. Tell us now whether the Apostle do not here distinguish between babes and strong men milk and strong meat the principles or foundation and perfection 7. And we would know of them whether all that is Revealed by God be of absolute Necessity to every mans salvation that do or may hear it If so then no man can be saved that knoweth not all that God hath revealed and then no one in the world can be saved for here we know but in part And their own Commentators differ about the word of God which sheweth that they are imperfect in the Knowledge of its sense And their Pope knows it not or else he is shamefully to blame that will not tell it the world and reconcile his Commentators and Disputers But if all revealed be not of Absolute Necessity then we may have leave to distinguish between points absolutely Necessary and the rest 8. And we would know whether all shall be damned that know not as much as the most Learned and Wise if not then still we may have leave to distinguish 9. Further we demand whether any ignorance or error that is culpable will stand with Charity and Salvation If not then who shall be saved If yea then we may still distinguish the points of Absolute Necessity from the rest 10. We demand also whether the whole holy Scripture be the word of God If so then whether we ought not to believe it all as far as we can understand it And if so whether it be not all de fide matter of Faith If not they must tell us what part of Gods word is to be believed and what not If yea then certainly men may err de fide in points of Faith and yet have Charity and be saved as their disagreeing Commentators Casuists and Schoolmen do 11. We would know whether the matters that their Divines are disagreed in be Revealed by God or things unrevealed If not revealed do they not deserve to be kickt out of the world for troubling the world so with unrevealed things If they be Revealed are they not Revealed to be believed and so are de fide 12. And we would know whether there be not some things Essential to true Obedience and some things not Essential If not then no sinner hath sincere Obedience and can be saved If yea then why may not the same be said of faith 13. Also we would know when they baptize the Adult whether they require any profession of the faith from them or not If not they may as well baptize Infidels or Heathens If they do then what is that profession Is it a profession of every particular truth that God hath revealed to be believed No sure for then none but Doctors must be baptized Nor they neither Or is it a profession of some particular Truths only If of some only why of those more then the rest if they be not the Essentials distinguishable from the rest And do they make men true Christians by baptizing them or not If they do then sure the Baptismal faith must contain all that is Essential to
at Anatolius his rising and the equaling him with Rome but they never excepted one word that ever I found against the saying that it was because of the Empire that Rome by the Fathers had the Primacy given it And the Reason given by themselves Concil Constant Can. 5. is because Constantinople is new Rome But Binnius saith that Rome receiveth not the Canons of this Council neither but only their condemnation of Macedonius And he saith that every Council hath just so much strength and authority as the Apostolick seat bestoweth on it For saith he unless this be admitted no reason can be given why some Councils of greater numbers of Bishops were reprobated and others of a smaller number confirmed Bin. Vol. 2. p. 515. What would you have more Sirs Do you not see yet what the Popish Catholick Church is and what they mean when they mouth it out to you and ask you whether your private Judgement be safer or wiser then that of the whole Church or of all the Christian world You see they mean all this while but one man whom Gretser and others plainly confess they call the Church So that indeed it is General Councils and all the Christian world or Church that are the ignorant fallible and oft erring part and it is one man that sometime is reputed an incarnate Devil by a General Council too that is the unerring Pillar of the Church and wiser then all they Do you not see that they make a meer nothing or mockery of General Councils any further then they please the Pope And can you expect that any thing should please them that is against his Greatness or as Julius the second calls it his holding the place of the great God the Maker of all things and all Laws What a vile abuse is it then of the Pope to trouble the world by the meetings and Consultations of General Councils when he can sit at Rome and contradict them infallibly and Good man is fain to save the Catholick Church from the Errors that General Councils the Representative Catholick Church would else lead them into and therefore could he not with less ado infallibly make us Laws Canons and Scriptures without them For sure that which the Pope can do against a General Council he can do without them If he can Infallibly contradict a General Council and Infallibly Rule us contrary to their Judgement he may no doubt Infallibly Rule us without them And therefore of late times they have learnt so much wit that you may look long enough before you see a General Council And I think the Council of Constance were no better Prognosticators then William Lilly nor no more effectuall Lawgivers then Wat Tyler when they Prognosticated or Ordained Decennial Councils And I will be judged by all the world And here also you may see what account the Papists make even of the first General Councils It s all one with them to judge others Hereticks for contradicting especially the four first General Councils compared to the four Evangelists as the Scripture it self and yet who would have thought it they profess themselves to reject the Canons or Decrees of both these the first of Constantinople and that of Calcedon in part And now I think on it by this priviledge I cannot see but the Pope is priviledged from all possibility of being an Heretick personally But these things are on the by I return to the point in hand which is to prove to you that not only the Romish Universal Monarchy and Vice-godhead but even its Patriarchal Primacy was no Apostolical Tradition but an Humane Institution founded on this Consideration that Rome was the Imperial Seat and City 5. And Humane it must needs be 1. For we find that Councils did not declare it as any part of the Law of God but Ordain it as an act of their own 2. We find them adding the Patriarchate of Constantinople which was a new seat neither Patriarch nor Bishop residing there in the Apostles dayes or long after 3. Yea we find them giving this new Patriarch the second place and once making him equal with old Rome which they would never have presumed to do if they had thought that the Patriarchship of Alexandria Antioch or Rome had been of Divine Institution for what horrible arrogancy would that have been when the Holy Ghost by the Apostles had made Alexandria second and Antioch third and Rome first for a Council to set Constantinople before two of them and equal with the first 6. And therefore we have reason to think that if Patriarchs be desirable creatures there may more and more new ones now be made as lawfully as Constantinople was 7. And we do not think that a General Council or Pope can make a man of one Nation to be Patriarch of the Church in another Nation that perhaps may be in wars with the Prince of the first Nation but that each Prince with the Church under their Power hath more to do in it then either Pope or Council And if Portugal and France set up Patriarchs at home they do as lawfully as the Patriarch of Constantinople was set up 8. And therefore we must needs judge that to disobey the Pope or withdraw from his subjection if he had never forfeited his Patriarchship by the claim of an Universal Headship were no greater a sin then to disobey or withdraw from the Patriarch of Alexandria Antioch or Constantinople either the Government by Patriarchs and Arch-bishops is of Gods ordaining and approving or not if not as most of the Protestants hold then it is no sin to reject any of them If it be of God then to reject any of them though in simple error is a sin of disobedience through ignorance but is far from proving a man to be no member of the Catholick Church for sure Patriarchs are far from being Essential parts of the Catholick Church For 9. We conclude as in the Papists own Judgement the Catholick Church may be without the Patriarch of Constantinople Alexandria or Antioch so may it therefore without the Pope of Rome CHAP. XX. Detect 11. THE great endeavour of the Papists is to advance Tradition The Council of Trent Ses 4. hath equalled it with the Scriptures as to the pious affection and reverence wherewith they receive it On pretence of this Tradition they have added abundance of new Articles to the faith and accuse us as Hereticks for not receiving their Traditions And this is a principall difference betwixt us that we take the Scriptures to be sufficient to acquaint us with the will of God as the Rule of faith and holy living and they take it to be but part of the word of God and that the other part is in unwritten Tradition which they equal with this as afore For the maintaining of Tradition it is that they write so much to the dishonour of the holy Scripture as you may find in Rushworths Dialogues and Tho. Whites Defence of them and
when they had no being since the death of the Apostles 6. And also that we are able to prove the death and burial of many things that have gone long under the name of Traditions 7. And when we find so lame an account from your selves of the true Apostolical Traditions You are so confounded between your Ecclesiasticall Decrees and Traditions and your Apostolical Traditions that we despair of learning from you to know one from the other and of seeing under the hand of his Holiness and a General Council a Catalogue of the true Apostolical Traditions And sure it seems to us scarce fair dealing that in one thousand and five hundered years time if indeed there have been Popes so long the Church could never have an enumeration and description of these Traditions with the proofs of them Had you told us which are Apostolick Traditions but as fully and plainly as the Scriptures which you accuse of insufficiency and obscurity do deliver us their part you had discharged your pretended trust 8. And it is in our eyes an abominable impiety for you to equal your Traditions with the holy Scripture till you have enumerated and proved them And it makes us the more to suspect your Traditions when we perceive that they or their Patrons have such an enmity to the Holy Scriptures that they cannot be rightly defended without casting some reproach upon the Scriptures But this we do not much wonder at for it is no new thing with the applauders of Tradition We find the eighth General Council at Constantinople Can. 3. decreeing that the Image of Christ be adored with equal Honour with the Holy Scripture But whether that be an Apostolical Tradition we doubt 9. And if General Councils themselves and that of your own should be for the sufficiency of Scripture what then is become of all your Traditions Search your own Binnius page 299. whether it past not as sound doctrine at the Council of Basil in Ragusii Orat. Sup. 6. that faith and all things necessary to salvation both matters of belief and matters of practice are founded in the literal sense of Scripture and only from that may argumentation be taken for the proving of those things that are matters of faith or necessary to salvation and not from those passages that are spoken by allegory or other spiritual sence Sup. 7. The Holy Scripture in the literal sense soundly and well understood is the infallible and most sufficient Rule of faith Is not here enough against all other Traditional Articles of faith A plain man would think so Yea but Binnius noteth that he meaneth that explicitely or implicitely it is so Well! I confess the best of you are slippery enough but let us grant this for indeed he so explaineth himself afterward yet that 's nothing for Tradition He there maintaineth that Scripture is the Rule of faith not part of the Rule For saith he when the intellect hapneth to err as in hereticks its necessary that there be some Rule by the deviation or conformity to which the intellect may perceive that it doth or doth not err Else it would be still in doubt and fluctuate it appeareth that no humane science is the Rule of faith It remaineth therefore that the Holy Scripture is this Rule of faith This is the Rule John 20. where be saith these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the son of God and believing might have life in his name And 2 Pet. 2. You have a more sure word of prophecy to which ye do well that ye attend as to a light c. And Rom. 15. Whatsoever things were written were written for our learning c. And its plain that the foresaid authorities are of holy Scripture and speak of the holy Scripture c. The second part also is plain because if the holy Scripture were not a sufficient Rule of faith it would follow that the Holy Ghost had insufficiently delivered it who is the author of it which is by no means to be thought of God whose works are all perfect Moreover if the Holy Scripture were wanting in any things that are necessary to salvation then those things that are wanting might lawfully and deservedly be superadded from some thing else aliunde or if any thing were superfluous be diminished But this is forbidden Rev. 22. From whence its plain that in Scripture there is nothing defective and nothing superfluous which is agreeable to its author the Holy Ghost to whose Omnipotency it agreeeth that nothing deminutely to his Wisdom that nothing superfluously and to his Goodness that in a congruous order he provide for the Necessity of our salvation Prov. 30. 5 6. The word of God is a fiery buckler to them that hope in him Add thou not to his words lest be reprove thee and thou be found a lyar How like you all this in a Popish General Council and in an Oration against the Sacrament in both kinds Well! but perhaps the distinction unsaith all again No such matter you shall hear it truly recited He proceeds thus But for the further declaration of this Rule as to that part it must be known that the sufficiency of any doctrine is necessarily to be understood two wayes one way Explicitely another way Implicitely And this is true in every Doctrine or science because no doctrine was ever so sufficiently delivered that all the Conclusions contained in its principles were delivered and expressed explicitely and in the proper terms and so it is in our purpose because there is nothing that any way or in any manner N.B. pertaineth to faith and salvation which is not most sufficiently contained in the holy Scripture explicitely or implicitely Hence saith Austin every truth is contained in the Scriptures latent or patent as in other sciences Speculative or Moral and Civil the Conclusions and determinations are contained in their principles c. and the deduction is by way of inference or determination This is the plain Protestant Doctrine There is nothing any way necessary to faith or salvation but what is contained in the Scriptures either expresly or as the Conclusion in the premises Good still we desire no more Let holy Reason then discern the Conclusion in the premises and let us not be sent for it to the Authority of Rome nay sent for some thing else that is no Conclusion deducible from any Scripture principles we grant Tradition or Church practices are very useful for our better understanding of some Scriptures But what is this to another Traditional word of God Prove your Traditions but by inference from Scripture and we will receive them Yet let us hear this Orator further clearing his mind Adding to a Doctrine may be understood four wayes 1. By way of explication or declaration 2. By way of supply 3. By way of ampliation 4. By way of destruction or contrary The first way is necessary in every science and doctrine and specially in Holy Scripture not for it self
souls are acquainted with the sincerity of it whatever any that know not our hearts may say against it 5. All that are truly Baptized and own their Baptismal Covenant are visible members of the true Catholick Church For it is the very nature and use of Baptisme to enter us into that Church But Greeks Abassines Georgians Armenians c. and Protestants are all truly Baptized and own their Baptismal Covenant therefore we are all of the true Catholick Church What is ordinarily said against this succession of our Church I have answered in my safe Religion I now add an answer to what another viz H. Turbervile in his Manuall saith against us in the present point The easiness of his Arguments and the open vanity of his exceptions will give me leave to be the shorter in confuting them His first Argument pag. 43. is this The true Church of God hath had a continued Succession from Christ But the Protestant Church and so of all other Sectaries hath not a continued Succession from Christ to this time therefore c. Answ 1. I pray thee Reader be an impartial Judge what this man or any Papist ever said with sense and reason to prove that the Eastern and Southern Churches have no true Succession Let them talk what they please of their Schisme the world knows they have had as good a Succession as Rome Are they not now of the same Church and Religion as ever they have been All the change that many of them have made hath been but in the entertaining of some fopperies common to Rome and them And if any of these which you call Sectaries can prove their Succession it destroyes your Argument and Cause Me thinks you should not ask them where their Church was before Luther 2. But how doth this Disputer prove his Minor that we have no Succession Only by a stark falshood forsooth by the Concession of the most Learned Adversaries who freely and unanimously Confess that before Luther made his separation from the Church of Rome for nine hundred or one thousand years together the whole world was Catholick and in obedience to the Pope of Rome Answ O horrid boldness that a man that pleads for the sanctity of his Church dare thus speak so notorious an untruth in the face of the world At this rate of Disputing the man might have saved the labour of writing his Book and have as honestly at once have perswaded his Disciples that his Adversaries unanimously consess that the Papists cause is best What if the fifteen cited by him had said so when I can bring him one thousand five hundred of another mind and cite him fifteen for one of another mind is that the unanimous confession of his Adversaries But unless his Adversaries were quite beside themselves there is not one of them could say as he feigneth them to say For doth not the world know that the Eastern and Southern Churches far exceeding the Romanists in number did deny obedience to the Pope of Rome Would this perswade his poor Disciples that we all confess that there are or were no Christians in the world but Protestants and Papists His first cited Confession is Calvins that all the Western Churches have defended Popery A fair proof Doth this Disputer believe in good sadness that the Western Churches are all the world or a sixth part of the world But this is the Popish arguing What Calvin speaks of the Western Churches that is the prevailing power in each Nation of them he interprets of all the world So he deales with Dr. White who expresly in the words before those which he citeth affirmeth the visibility of the Churches of Greece Ethiope Armenia and Rome but only saith that at all times there hath not been visible distinct companies free from all corruption which one would think every penitent man should grant that knows the corruption of his own heart and life It would be tedious to stand to shew his odious abuse of the rest when they that say most of the word world but as it is used Luk. 2. 1. so much of his first argument His second is this Without a continued number of Bishops Priests Laicks succeeding one another in the profession of the same faith from Christ and his Apostles to this time a continued succession cannot be had But Protestants have no continued number c. Answ And how proves he the Minor No how at all but puts us to disprove it and withall gives us certain Laws which we will obey when they grow up to the honour of being reasonable His first Law is that We must name none but only such as held explicitely the thirty nine Articles all granting and denying the same points that the late Protestants of England granted or denyed for if they differ from them in any one materiall point they cannot be esteemed Protestants Answ A learned Law And what call you a material point You may yet make what you list of it If they differ in any point Essentiall to Christianity we grant your imposition to be necessary But there is not the least Chronologicall or Geographicall or other truth in Scripture but is a Materiall Point though not Essential Must you needs know which these Essentials are In a word Those which the Apostles and the ancient Church pre-required the knowledge and profession of unto Baptism And because all your fond exceptions are grounded on this one point I shall crave your patience while I briefly but sufficiently prove that Men that err and that in points materiall may yet be of the same Church and Religion Argum. 1. If men that err in points material that is precious truths of God which they ought to have believed may yet be true Christians and hold all the Essentials of Christianity then may they be of the same true Church and Religion But the former is true therefore so is the later The Antecedent is proved in that all truths which may be called Materiall are not of the essence of Christianity Argum. 2. The Apostle Thomas erred in a Materiall point which is now an essentiall when he would not believe Christs Resurrection and yet was a member of the true Church therefore c. Argum. 3. The Papists err in material points and yet think themselves of the same true Church therefore they must confess that differing in Material points may be the case of members of the same true Church For proof of the Minor I demand Are none of the points Material that have been so hotly agitated between the Jesuites and Dominicans and Jansenists the Papall party and the Councill party The Thomists Scotists Ockamists c. At least review the Jesuite Casuists cited by the Jansenists Mysterie of Jesuitism and tell us whether it be no whit Material Whether a man may kill another for a Crown or may kill both Judge and witnesses to avoid an unjust sentence Or whether a man should go with good meanings into a Whore-house to perswade them
to penitence that hath found by experience that when he comes there he is naught with them himself Or whether a man may lawfully lie and calumniate to put by a calumny Or speak falsly with mentall reservations Or forbear loving God many years together if not all his life Are these points no whit Material You know that one part of you with a Pope and General Council are for deposing Heretical Kings and murthering and stabbing them and others of you disavow it Is this no whit material And yet you are all of one Church and Religion A hundred more of your differences I could name Argum. 4. From instances of the Fathers that have erred in Material points and yet are taken to be of the same Church and Religion How many Churches differed about Easter day what abundance of errors are in your Clementines and other such writers owned by you Justin Martyr was a Millenarie Numbered divers Infidels with Christians thought that Angels lived by meat and generated with Devils c. Athenagoras thought that second Marriages were comely Adultery and that the Angels fell by the love of women and begot Gyants of them c. Irenaeus hath the like Theophilus Antioch worse Tertullian and Orrigen you will confess had yet worse Clem. Alexand. was for the salvation of Infidels and Heathens against swearing and many such besides those before mentioned Greg. Thaumaturgus hath divers if the confession and other works be his that are ascribed to him Cyprian Firmilian and the whole Council at Carthage were for rebaptizing those baptized by hereticks Against all Wars and Oaths Lactantius with many more was a Millenary and hath too many great errors I have no delight to rake into their faults but if it be necessary I shall quickly prove many and great errors by fourty more of them at the least And yet all these or most are confessed by you to be of one Church and Religion Argum. 5. From your own Confessions Bellarmine lib. 1. de Beat. SS cap. 6. faith that he seeth not how the sentence of Justin Irenaeus c. can be defended from error Of Tertullian he saith There 's no trust to be given to him lib. 4. de Rom. Pont. c. 8. Eusebius he saith was addicted to the Hereticks Cyprian he saith did seem to sin mortally de Rom. Pont. lib. 4. cap 7. Augustine is accused by many Jesuites for going too far from Pelagius Hierom is oft pluckt by you And so are many more of the Fathers And yet you confess some of them at least were of the true Church and Religion Argum. 6. If there be no perfect concord to be expected till we come to the place of perfect knowledge and happiness then it is not perfect concord that is necessary to prove us of the same Church or Religion But the Antecedent is alas too far past doubt Therefore c. Argum. 7. If the godly and learned Doctors of the Church and all men have some alas how many culpable errors in matters of Religion yea of faith if you call that de fide which we are obliged to believe then those that have such errors may be of the same Church and Religion But the Antecedent is so true and evident that I think none but a blind proud Pharisee will deny himself to beg of God daily to pardon and heal his culpable errors So much to prove that men of errors and differing minds if not about the essence of the Church may be of the same Church 2. But why is it that they must all needs explicitely hold the thirty nine Articles 1. I pray you tell us whether all your own Church do explicitely hold and believe all your Articles that is all that Popes and General Councils have defined or declared Dare you say that one of five hundred of five thousand doth explicitely believe all this And why then is it necessary in our case that all must explicitely believe all those Articles 2. Yea with us it is far more unnecessary For we take not those Articles for the Rule of our faith but only the holy Scripture And therefore you may as well tell us that no man is of our Religion that did not write or speak all the same words that Jewell Reignolds Perkins or such other have written in their whole works 3. It s easie to prove for all that that the sense and substance of those Articles have been owned by the Churches in all ages 3. But what if we grant your conclusion that else they cannot be esteemed Protestants what of that As if none but Protestants were of the same Church and Religion with us Sure you think we make a sect of our selves like you and exclude all others from the Church and Salvation as you do The word Protestant is not the first denomination of our Religion from its essence for so we call our selves Christians only But it is a title that accidentally accrewed to our Religion from our Protesting against your innovations and corruptions and our Rejecting the errors contrary to our Religion which you had introduced Now those that were not involved in your errors as our forefathers were but lived at a further distance from you might have no occasion to make such a Protestation and yet be of the same Church and Religion as we are Now to your particular Laws 1. Saith H. T. Let him not name the Waldenses for they held the Real presence that the Apostles were Lay men that all Magistrates fall from their dignity by any mortal sin that it is not lawful to swear c. and Waldo lived but in one thousand one hundred and sixty Answ 1. We have better assurance of the faith of the Waldenses in their own published Confessions then from the mouth of their Adversaries 2. The Lutherans hold the real presence and yet are of the same Religion and Church with us 3. The Apostles were Lay-men in the Jews account and sense as not being Priests or Levites but not in Christians account that believed their mission and thus thought the Waldenses 4. They thought that Magistrates and Ministers do by Mortal sin forfeit all the right and title to their office from which themselves may have comfort and justification in judgement But they never thought that they were not to be obeyed by others or that their actions were not valid for the Churches good 5. Many of the ancientest Fathers thought it unlawfull to swear at all that yet are cited by you as of your Church But the Waldenses are slandered in these points 6. Though Waldo was but about one thousand one hundred and sixty yet the same Religion and Church under other names and before those names were fastned on them was much elder as Raynerius may satisfie you So that for all this the Waldenses and we are of one Church and Religion He adds Let him not name the Hussites for they held Mass Transubstantiation and seven Sacraments that the universal Church consisted only of the
not the subject of the Pope as universal Monarch Nor can any other be saved as being without the Church 3. And that the Church of Rome is by Gods appointment the Mistris of all other Churches 4. And that the Pope of Rome is Infallible 5. That we cannot believe the Scriptures to be the word of God or the Christian doctrine to be true but upon the Authoritative Tradition of the Roman Church and upon the knowledge or belief of their Infallibility that is we must believe in the Pope as Infallible before we can believe in Christ who is pretended to give him that infallibility 6. That no Scripture is by any man to be interpreted but according to the sence of the Pope or Roman Church and the unanimous consent of the Fathers 7. That a General Council approved by the Pope cannot err but a General Council not approved by the Pope may err 8. That nothing is to us an Article of faith till it be declared by the Pope or a General Council though it was long before declared by Christ or his Apostles as plain as they can speak 9. That a General Council hath no more validity then the Pope giveth it 10. That no Pastor hath a valid Ordination unless it be derived from the Pope 11. That there are Articles of faith of Necessity to our Salvation which are not contained in the Holy Scriptures nor can be proved by them 12. That such Traditions are to be received with equal pious affection and reverence as the holy Scriptures 13. That Images have equal honour with the Holy Gospel 14. That the Clergy of the Catholick Church ought to swear obedience to the Pope as Christs Vicar 15. That the Pope should be a temporal Prince 16. That the Pope and his Clergy ought to be exempted from the Government of Princes and Princes ought not to judge and punish the Clergy till the Pope deliver them to their power having degraded them 17. That the Pope may dispossess Princes of their Dominions and give them to others if those Princes be such as he judgeth hereticks or will not exterminate Hereticks 18. That in such cases the Pope may discharge all the subjects from their allegiance and fidelity 19. That the Pope in his own Territories and Princes in theirs must burn or otherwise put to death all that deny Transubstantiation the Popes Soveraignty or such doctrines as are afore expressed when the Pope hath sentenced them 20. That the people should ordinarily be forbidden to read the Scripture in a known tongue except some few that have a license from the ordinary 21. That publick Prayers Prayses and other publick worship of God should be performed constantly in a language not understood by the People or only in Latine Greek or Hebrew 22. That the Bread and Wine in the Eucharist is Transubtantiate into the very body and blood of Christ so that it is no more true Bread or Wine though our eyes tast and feeling tell us that it is 23. That the consecrated host is to be worshipped with Divine worship and called our Lord God 24. That the Pope may oblige the people to receive the Eucharist only in one kind and forbid them the Cup. 25. That the sins called venial by the Papists are properly no sins and deserve no more but temporal punishment 26. That we may be perfect in this life by this double perfection 1. To have no sin but to keep all Gods Law perfectly 2. To supererogate by doing more then is our Duty 27. That our works properly merit salvation of God by way of Commutative Justice or by the Condignity of the works as proportioned to the Reward 28. That Priests should generally be fordidden Marriage 29. That there is a fire called Purgatory where souls are tormented and where sin is pardoned in another world 30. That in Baptism there is an implicite vow of obedience to the Pope of Rome 31. That God is ordinarily to be worshipped by the Oblation of a true proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead where the Priest only shall eat and drink the body and blood of Christ while the Congregation look on and partake not 32. That the Canon of Scripture is the same that is declared by the Council of Trent I will pass by abundance more to avoid tediousness And I will not stay to enquire which of these are proper to the Papists But I am resolved so to receive many of them as they can prove a Catholick succession of that is that they were in all ages the Doctrine of the Universal Church And I crave the charity of such a proof from some Papist or other if they have any charity in them and that they will no longer keep universal Tradition in their purses And I would desire H. T. to revise his Catalogue and instead of twenty or thirty dead and silent names that signifie no more then Blanks or Cyphers he would prove that both those persons and the Catholick Church did in every age hold these thirty two forementioned doctrines And when hath done then let him boast of his Catalogue Till they will perform this task let them never more for shame call to us for Catalogues or proof of succession But if they are so unkind that they will not give us any proof of such a Catholick succession of Popery we shall be ready to supererogate and give them full proof of the Negative That there hath been no such succession of these thirty two points as soon as we can perceive that they will ingeniously entertain it though indeed it hath been often done already But certainly it belongeth to them that superinduce more Articles of Faith to prove the continuation of their own Articles through all ages of which anon Well! but one of these Articles at least the Popes Soveraignty H. T. will prove successively if you will be credulous enough In the first age he proves it from Peters words Act. 15. 7 8 9 10. God chose Peter to convert Cornelius and his company therefore the Pope is the Universall Monarch Are you not all convinced by this admirable argument But he forgot that Bellarmine Ragusius in Concil Basil and others of them say that no Article can be proved from Scripture but from the proper literall sence To say somewhat more he unseasonably talks of the Council of Sardis and Calcedon an 400. 451. lest the first age have but a blank page In the second age he hath nothing but the names of a few that never dreamt of Popery and a Canon which you must believe was the Apostles that Priests must communicate Of which we are well content In the third Age he nameth fifteen Bishops of Rome of whom the last was deposed for offering incense to Saturn Jupiter c. But not a syllable to prove that one of these Bishops was the universal Monarch Much less that the Catholick Church was for such Monarchy But to excuse the matter he tells you that
of any Father whereby it may appear that any account at all was made of it Where he citeth the full express words of the Fathers of those first ages against praying to Saints as Origen in Jus. Hom. 16. And in Rom. lib. 2. cap. 2. And Contr. Celsum lib. 8. page 432 433 406 411 412. lib. 5. pag. 239. Tertullian Apol. cap. 30. Tertullian and Cyprian of Prayer Athanasius Orat. 4. Cont. Arrium pag. 259 260. Eccles Smyrn apud Euseb Hist lib. 4. c. I am loth to recite what is there already given you 3. And when Prayer to the dead did come in how exceedingly it differed from the Romish Prayers to the dead I pray you read there in the same Author 4. And also of those Adorations and Devotions offered by the Papists to the Virgin Mary I desire you to read in the same Author and Place enough to make a Christian tremble and which for my part I am not able to excuse from horrid Blasphemy or Idolatry though I am willing to put the best interpretation on their words that reason will allow 5. The Reason why in the old Testament men were not wont to pray to Saints Bellarmine saith was because then they did not enter into heaven nor see God Bellar. de sanct Beat. li. 2. cap. 19. So Suarez in the third part Tom. 2. disp 42. Sect. 1. But abundance of the chief Doctors of the Church for divers Ages were of opinion that the Saints are not admitted into Heaven to the clear sight of God before the day of Judgement as most of the Eastern Churches do to this day therefore they could not be for the Popish Prayer to Saints And here again observe that men may be of the same faith and Church with us that differ and err in as great a matter as this The Council of Florence hath now defined it that departed souls are admitted into Heaven to the clear sight of God And yet Stapleton and Francis Pegna à Castro Medina Sotus affirm that Irenaeus Justin Martyr Tertullian Clemens Romanus Origen Ambrose Chrysostome Austin Lactantius Victorinus Prudentius Theodoret Aretas Oecumenius Theophilact Euthymius yea and Bernard have delivered the contrary sentence See Staplet Defens Eccles author cont Whitak lib. 1. cap. 2. with Fran. Pegna in part 2. Director Inquisitor com 21. Now as all these must needs be against the Popish Invocation of Saints so they were against that which is now determined to be de fide Whence I gather on the by 1. That the Romish faith increaseth and is not the same as heretofore 2. That they had not this Article by Tradition from any of these Fathers or from the Apostles by them unless from the Scriptures 3. That men that err in such points as are now defined by Councils to be de fide are yet accounted by Papists to be of their Church and faith And therefore they may be of ours notwithstanding such errours as this in hand 4. And note also by this tast whether the Papists be not a perjured generation that swear not to expound Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers 6. The Council of Laodicea condemned them as Idolaters that prayed to Angels Can. 35. which Caranza Crab and other Papists have turned into Angulos whose falsification you may see fully detected by the said Bishop Usher ibid. pag. 470. 471 472. Read there also the full Testimonies of Greg. Nissen Athanasius Epiphanius c. against praying to Saints and Angels and the detection of Bellarmines fraud that pretendeth the Fathers to speak of the Gentiles Idolatry when they mention the Virgin Mary and the Saints and say expresly they were not to be adored But for all this H. T. Manual page 291 c. hath Fathers for this Adoration of Angels and Saints And who are they The first is Dionysius to which I answer 1. There is never a such a word in the place cited in Dionysius in the Book that I have at hand printed Lugdun 1572. 2. We are for praying the Saints to pray for us too that is those on earth And the words cited by him mention not the Saints in heaven 3. That Dionysius is not Dionysius but a spurious Apochryphal Book Not once known and mentioned in the world till Gregory the greats dayes six hundred years after Christ as Bellarmine himself saith Lib. de Scriptor Eccles de Dionys And lib. 2. de Monach. cap. 5. The second is Clem. Apostol Constit 5. Answ 1. The words speak only of honouring the Martyrs which is our unquestioned duty but not of Praying to them 2. It s an Apochryphal forgery and neither the Apostles nor Clements Work which he citeth but any thing will serve these men Let him believe Bellarmine de scriptor Eccles pag. 38 39. where he proveth it and saith that in the Latine Church these Constitutions are of almost no account and the Greeks themselves Canon 2. Trul. reject them as depraved by Hereticks and that the receiving of them is it that misleadeth the Aethiopians See more against them in Cooks Censurâ pag. 17 18 19. and Rivets Crit. Sac. Dalaeus in Pseudepigrap The third Testimony of H. T. is from Justins second Apol. Answ It is not Praying to Angels that Justin seemeth to intend but giving them due honour which we allow of His intent is to stop the mouths of Heathens that called the Christians impious for renouncing their Gods To whom he replyeth that we yet honour the true God and his Angels c. His Testimony for the third age is only Origen and yet none of Origen First in his Lament Answ 1. Origen there mentioneth the Saints but not the dead Saints It may be all the Saints in the Church on earth whose prayers he desireth 2. If this satisfie you not at least be satisfied with this that you cite a forgery that is none of Origens works Not only Erasmus saith that This Lamentation was neither written by Origen nor translated by Hierom but is the fiction of some unlearned man that by this trick devised to defame Origen But Baronius Annal. Tit. 2. ad an 253. p. 477. witnesseth that Pope Gelasius numbers it with the Apocryphals But H. T. hath a second testimony from Origen in Cantic Hom. 3. Answ 1. That speaks of the Saints prayer for us but not of our prayers to them one word which is the thing in question 2. But Erasmus and others have shewed that neither is this any of Origens works Sixtus Senensis saith that some old Books put Hieroms name to it And Lombard and Aquinas cite passages out of it as Ambroses You see now what Testimonies H. T. hath produced for the first three Ages even till above four hundred years after Christ And yet no doubt but this is currant proof with the poor deluded Papists that read his Book 2. The next exception to be considered is Praying for the Dead which they say the ancient Church was for Answ 1. We are for
the Intention of the Ordainers And therefore Bellarmine is fain to take up with this that though we cannot be sure that he is a true Pope Bishop or Presbyter that is ordained yet we are bound to obey him But where then is the Certainty of succession 4. What succession of Episcopal Consecration was there in the Church of Alexandria when Hierom Epist ad Evagrium tells us that At Alexandria from Mark the Evangelist even till Heraclus and Dionysius their Bishops the Presbyters did alwayes name one man that Bishop whom they chose from among themselves and placed in a higher degree Even as if an Army make an Emperour or the Deacons choose one of themselves whom they know to be industrious and call him the chief Deacon Thus Hierom shews that Bishops were then made by meer Presbyters And in the same Epistle he proves from Scripture that Presbyters and Bishops were then all one And if so there were no Prelatical Ordinations then at all And your Medina accusing Hierom of error in this saith that Ambrose Austin Sedulius Primasius Chrysostom Theodoret Oecumenius Theophilact were in the same heresie as Bellarmine himself reporteth him So that Presbyters now may either ordain or make themselves Bishops as those of Alexandria did to do it And as Hierom there saith All are the successors of the Apostles and our Bishops or Presbyters are such as much at least as yours yet Apostles as Apostles have no Successors at all as Bellarmine well teacheth lib. 4. de Pontif. cap. 25. saying Bishops do not properly succeed the Apostles because the Apostles were not ordinary but extraordinary and as it were delegate Pastors who have no Successors Bishops have no part of the true Apostolick Authority Apostles could preach in the whole world and found Churches but so cannot Bishops The Apostles could write Canonical Books but so cannot Bishops Apostles had the gifts of tongues and miracles but so have not Bishops The Apostles had Jurisdiction over the whole Church but so have not Bishops And there is no Succession but to a Predecessor but Apostles and Bishops were in the Church both at once as appeareth by Timothy Titus Evodius and many more If therefore Bishops succeed Apostles to what Apostle did Titus succeed and whom did Timothy succeed To conclude Bishops succed Apostles but in the same manner as Presbyters succeed the seventy two Disciples But its manifest that Presbyters do not properly succeed the seventy two Disciples but only by similitude For those seventy two Disciples were not Presbyters nor did they receive any Order of Jurisdiction from Christ Philip Stephen and others that were of the seventy two had never been after Ordained Deacons if they had been Presbyters before Thus Bellarmine See now what 's become of the Popish Apostolical Successors among their Bishops And the scope of all this is to prove that all Bishops receive their Power from the Pope and so their succession is confined to him alone and therefore as oft as there have been interruptions in the Papal Succession so oft the Succession of all their Church was interrupted But if Bishops succeed not Apostles and have not any of the Apostolick Power who then doth the Bishop of Rome succeed Why Bellarmine hath a shift for this but how sorry an one it is you shall bear cap. 25. he saith that The Pope of Rome properly succeedeth Peter not as an Apostle but as an Ordinary Pastor of the whole Church Let us then have no more talk of the Apostolick seat or at least no more Arguing from that name You see then that Peter was not the Universal Vicar as an Apostle nor doth the Pope so succeed him And do you think this doth not give away the Vicarship Which way hereafter will they prove it But an Objection falls in Bellarmines way that If this be so then none of the Bishops of Africk Asia c. were true Bishops that were not made by the Pope To which he answers as well as he can that its enough that the Pope do Consecrate them Mediately by making Patriarchs and Arch-bishops to do it and so Peter did Constitute the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch who thus receiving authority from the Pope did Rule almost all Asia and Africk But 1. That almost marreth the whole Cause For where now is the universal Headship 2. Did Bellarmine think in good sadness that Alexandria and Antioch were made at first the seats of Patriarchs having as large Jurisdiction as afterward they attained 3. How will he prove that Peter made these two Patriarchates and that not as an Apostle but as an Ordinary Vicar General 4. Who made the Patriarchate of Constantinople and gave them that vast Jurisdiction Did Peter many hundred years after his death Or did the Pope of Rome that tooth and nail resisted and still sought to diminish his Power Or rather did not the General Councils do it by the Emperors Commands the Pope excepting and repining at it 5. Who made the Patriarch of Jerusalem and who made James Bishop of Jerusalem did Peter And who made Timothy and Titus Bishops did Peter or Paul And who gave Paul that Power not Peter certainly Reader do not these men jest with holy things Or is it like that they believe themselves 6. Bellarmine confesseth that the Potestas Ordinis interioris jurisdictionis are both as immediately from God to every Bishop as to the Pope cap. 22. And why then should it be denyed of the power of exterior Jurisdiction 1. Is one part of the Essence of the Office given by the Pope and the rest without him 2. And what if it be proved that exterior and interior Jurisdiction of a Pastor is all one Though the matter of obedience be exterior yet the Jurisdiction is exercised only on the soul directly in one case as well as another it being the mind on which the obiglation lyeth and the Pastoral Rule is powerful and effectual and further then you procure consent you are despised For it s the Magistrates work to use violence Bishops as Bishops can but perswade and deal by words with the inner man And thus you see what is become of the Papists Succession 5. Most of the Ministers in England till within these few years were ordained by Bishops If that were of Necessity they have it 6. He that is ordained according to the Apostles directions or prescript in Scripture hath the true Apostolical Ordination but so are we Ordained therefore The Apostles never Confined Ordination to Prelates much less to those Prelates that depend on the Pope of Rome The Bishops to whom the Apostles committed this Power are the same that are called Presbyters by them and they were the Overseers or Pastors but of one single Church and not of many Churches And such are those that Ordain among us now Gregor Nazianzen Orat. 18. saith thus I would there were no Presidency nor Prerogative of Place and Tyrannical Priviledges that so we might be known
say that we are wanting and so far wanting that being out of the Church there is no true Holiness among us When in the Preface of my Book against Popery called The Safe Religion I had truly spoken my experience that I had never the happiness to be acquainted with any Papist of a serious spiritual temper and holy life but only some of a Ceremonious formall kind of Religion and but with very few that lived not in some gross sin I was passionately censured by some of the Papists as one that condemned all for some When as 1. I only spoke of my own acquaintance 2. And I added withall that yet I was confident that God had his servants among them though I had not the happiness to know them 3. And is it not a ridiculous business that these same men should be so passionate with me for speaking but the truth concerning the ungodliness of some of them when at the same time they make it an Article of their faith and an essential point of Popery That no one Protestant hath charity or can be saved yea that no Christian in the world is sanctified really and can be saved but a Papist O the partiality of these men 4. Yea when they necessitate us to mention their ungodliness by calling us to it and laying the stress of all our cause upon the point yea laying the very Christian faith it self upon the Holiness of their Church For we must not know that Scripture is Gods word or that Christianity is the true Religion till we first know that the Church of Rome is the true Church that we may receive it on their credit And we must know that they are the true Church by being the only Holy people in the world I must profess that if my faith lay on this foundation I know so much of the falshood of it that I must needs turn infidell and I can no more believe this then I can believe that the snow is not white They confess I thank them for nothing that their common people are bad but yet say they there is some good ones among us Inter haereticos autem nullus est bonus but among the hereticks not one is good So saith Thom. Ã Jesu de convers omn Gent. pag. 531. And saith H. Turbervile Manual p. 84. But I never yet heard of any Protestant Saints in the world O wonderfull perverseness of the hearts of Sectaries O wonderfull Patience of God! Did not this mans heart tremble or smite him to write so horrid so impudent a reproach against so many precious Saints of God Durst he thus attempt to rob the Lord of the fruit of his blood and to vilifie his Jewels and as Rabshakah to reproach the Israel of God to attempt to pluck them out of Christs hand that are given him by his Father and to shut them out of heaven that are redeemed and made heirs by so dear a Price and to spit in their faces whom Christ hath washed with his blood Did he not fear that dreadfull threatning of Christ Mat 18. 6. but who so shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me it were better for him that a milstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea Though I see so much impiety among the Papists I dare not say I dare not think that God hath not some Holy ones among them It s dangerous condemning those that Christ will Justifie and making his members to be the members of the Devil and abusing so grosly the apple of his eye If I see a man live wickedly I dare say that he is of a wicked life but I dare not say that All are so unless it be among men whose principles I am sure are inconsistent with godliness and I know that they hold those principles practically or prevalently And therefore I must say again that I have been acquainted with some Papists learned and unlearned The unlearned few of them knew what Christianity was nor whether Christ were God or Man Male or Female nor whether ever he was the King Prophet or Priest of the Church nor for what end he dyed nor what faith or repentance is but were infidels under the name of Papists or Catholicks The learned and unlearned live in some gross sin or other either all or neer all that I have been acquainted with The better sort would ordinarily swear by their Lady and by the Mass and sometime greater oaths The rest were some fornicators or adulterers some drunkards or revellers and gamesters or such like And never had I the happiness to be acquainted with one that would speak experimentally and savourily of the work of Grace upon his soul of the life of faith of communion with God and of the life to come but their Religion lay in being the Popes subjects and in fasting on Fridayes and in Lent from some sorts of meat and in saying over so many Ave Maries Pater Nosters or the like and in observing dayes and hours and Cereremonies Yet I again say I fully believe that there be better among them though I am not acquainted with them But if these men that never heard of a Protestant Saint and that conclude there is no one saved but a Papist and build their salvation on this as an Article of their faith had known but those that I have known and yet know they would either have been of another mind or have been left unexcusable in a malicious reproaching of the Saints of the most high I bless the Lord that I can truly say that I know many and many that as far as the heart of another can be known by words and a holy life do live in much communion with God whose souls are daily longing after him and some of them that have vacancy from worldly necessities spending much of their lives upon their knees having had many a special extraordinary return to their importunate requests whose delight is in the Law of the Lord in which they meditate day and night which is lockt up among the Papists Whose hearts smite them for vain words or thoughs or the loss of a few minutes of time that live in exemplary humility meekness and self-denyal bearing wrongs patiently and doing good to as many as they can as the servants of all contemning the Riches and Honours of the world mortifying the flesh and some of them longing to be dissolved and to be with Christ in whom the world never knew either once drunkenness fornication or one rash oath or any other gross sin that I could ever hear of And is it certain that all these shall be damned because they believe not in the Pope Nay is it not certain by Promise that all such shall be saved I must again profess that when the Papists lay their faith and cause on this that their Church is Holy and ours and all other are every man unholy it s almost all one to me
license they conversed And being sent to preach they go to play the whoremongers And that there was scarce any one of the Holy Nuns without her carnall male Devotary by which they broke their first faith with Christ c. This was your Holy Church And li. 2. art 28. he saith That most of the Clergy mix themselves with gluttony drunkenness and whoredom which is their common vice and most of them give themselves to the unnaturall vice Sodomie Thus continually yea and publikely do they offend against that holy chastity which they promised to the Lord besides those evils not to be named which in secret they commit which Papers will not receive nor pen can write Abundance more he hath of the same subject and their putting their choicest youth into houses of Sodomie This book of Alvarus Pelagius Bellarmine calleth Liber insignis de Scriptor Ecclesiast Math. Paris in Henr. 3. p. 819. tells us of Cardinal Hugo's farewell speech to the people of Lons when he departed with the Popes Court Friends saith he since we came to this City we have brought you great commodity and alms When we came hither we found three or four whore houses but now at our departure we leave but one but that one reacheth from the East Gate to the West Gate O Holy Pope and Holy Church But Costerus the Jesuite easily answers all that I have said Enchirid. cap. 2. de Eccles that The Church loseth not the name Holy as long as there is but one that 's truly Holy Answ Is this your sanctity I deny your conclusion For 1. If the Head be unholy an essential part is unholy and therefore the Church cannot be Holy 2. One person is not the Matter of the Church as one drop of Wine cast into the sea doth not make it a sea of Wine and one Italian in England makes not England Italian nor one Learned man make England Learned And let the Papists observe that it is from the very words of their own that I have spoken of them what is here recited and not from their adversaries And therefore I shall be so far from believing the Gospel upon the Account that their Church is Holy that recommendeth it or from believing them to be the only Church of Christ because of their Holiness that I must bless God that I live in a sweeter air and cleaner Society and should be loath to come out of the Garden into the Channel or sink to be made clean or sweet but say that the travaller learned more wit that left us this Resolution Roma vale vidi satis est vidisse revertar Cum leno aut meretrix scurra cinadus ero 2 THE second Proof which they bring of the Holiness of their Church is the strict life of their Fryars as Carthusians Franciscans and others Answ Having been so long already on this point I will be but short on this branch In a word 1. I have no mind to deny the Graces of the spirit in any that have them Though travellers tell me lamentable stories of your Fryars Guil. de Amore and his companions said much more and many other Popish Writers paint them out in an odious garb yet I do not doubt but God hath his servants among them 2. But I must tell you that this also shews the Pollution of your Church in comparison of our Churches that Holiness and Religion are such rarities and next to Miracles among you that it must be cloistred up or confined to certain orders that are properly called Religious as if the People had no Religiousness or Holiness When our care and Hope is to make all our Parish Churches far more Religious and Holy then your Monasteries or Convents Yea were not this Church much more Religious and Holy where I live I think I should have small comfort in it 3. THeir third Proof of the Holiness of their Churches is their unmarried Clergy Answ 1. I will not stir too long in this puddle or else I could tell you out of your own writers of the odious fruits of your unmarried Clergy Only because the essential parts of your Church are they that neerliest concern your cause I will ask you in brief whether it was not Pope John the eleventh that had Theodora for his whore whether it was no Pope Sergius the third that begot Pope John the twelfth of Marosia whether John the twelfth alias the thirteenth saith Luitprandus and others of your own did not ravish maids and wives at the Apostolick doors and at last was killed in the Act of Adultery whether it were not Pope Innocent of whom a Papist wrote this distich Octo Nocens pueros genuit totidemque puellas Hunc merito potuit dicere Roma patrem And whose Son was Aloisus made Prince of Parma by Pope Paul the third And for your Arch bishops Bishops Priests c. I shall now add but the words of your Dominicus Soto de Instit Jure qu. 6. art 1. cited by Rivet We do not deny saith he that in the Clergy such as keep Concubines and are Adulterers are frequent 2. We have many that live unmarryed as well as you but not on your terms 3. We know that Paul directed Timothy and Titus to ordain him a Bishop that was the Husband of one Wife and ruled well his house having his children in subjection and that the Church a long time held to this doctrine and that Greg. Nyssen was a marryed Bishop But if you are wiser then the Spirit of God or can change his Laws or can prove the Holy Ghost so mutable as to give one Law by Paul and other Apostles and another by the Pope we will believe you and forsake the Scripture when you can so far bewitch us and charm us to it We believe that a single life is of very great Convenience to a Pastor when it can be held and that Christs Rule must be observed Every man cannot receive this saying but he that can let him receive it And whether Ministers be Marryed or not Marryed as many now living in the next Parishes to me are not no more then my self it is a strange thing with us to hear of one in many Counties that was ever once guilty of fornication in his life and if any one be but once guilty in the Ministry he is cast out though he should be never so penitent as any man that readeth the Act for ejecting scandalous Ministers and Schoolmasters may see As also you may there see that if he were but once drunk if he swear curse or be guilty of other scandalous sins he is cast out without any more ado And none are so earnest for the through execution of this Law as the Ministers If a Minister do but go into an Alehouse except to visit the sick or on weighty business it is a scandalous thing among us we do not teach as the Jesuites cited by the Jansenist Montaltus that a man may lawfully go into a
to these witnesses some more of your worthies August Triumph de Ancon q. 5. art 1. saith To make a new Creed belongs only to the Pope because he is the Head of the Christian faith by whose authority all things belonging to faith are confirmed and strengthened Et Art 2. As he may make a new Creed so he may multiply new Articles upon Articles And in Praefat. sum ad Johan 22. he saith that the Popes power is Infinite because the Lord is great and his strength great and of his greatness there is no end And q. 36. ad 6. he saith that the Pope giveth the Motion of Direction and the sense of Knowledge into all the members of the Church For in him we live and move and have our being And the Will of God and consequently the Popes Will who is his Vicar is the first and chief cause of all motions corporall and spiritual And then no doubt may change without blame Abbas Panormitan in cap. C. Christus de haeret n. 2. saith The Pope can bring in a new Article of faith And Petr. de Anchoran in idic The Pope can make new Articles of faith that is such as now ought to be believed when before they ought not to be believed Turrecremat sum de Eccl. lib. 2. cap. 203. saith that the Pope is the Measure and Rule and Science of things to be believed And August de Ancona shews us that the Judgement of God is not higher then the Popes but the same and that therefore no man may appeal from the Pope to God qu. 6. art 1. And therefore be not offended if we suppose you to have changes A Confutation of a Popish Manuscript on this point Just as I was writing this I received another Popish M. S. sent from Wolverhampton to Sturbridge to which I shall return an answer before I go to the next point Pap. M. S. An Argument for the Church IT will not be denyed but that the Church of Rome was once a most pure excellent flourishing and Mother Church and her faith renowned in the whole world Rom. 1. 8. 6. 16. Whites Def. p. 555. King James speech to the Parliament Whitaker in his Answer to Dr. Sanders Fulk cap. 21. Thes 7. Reynolds in his fifth Conclusion This Church could not cease to be such but she must fall either by Apostacy Heresie or Schism Apostacy is not only a renouncing of the faith of Christ but of the name and Title of Christianity No man will say that the Church of Rome had such a fall or fell so Heresie is an adhesion or fast cleaving to some private or singular Opinion or error in faith contrary to the generally approved doctrine of the Church If the Church of Rome did ever adhere to any singular or new opinion disagreeable to the common received doctrine of the Christian world I pray you satisfie me in these particulars 1. By what General Council was she ever condemned 2. Which of the Fathers ever writ against her 3. By what Authority was she otherwise reproved For it seems to be a thing very incongruous that so great a Church should be condemned by every private person who hath a mind to condemn her Schism is a departure or division from the unity of the Church whereby the bond and Communion held with some former Church is broken and dissolved If ever the Church of Rome divided her self from any body of faithfull Christians or broke Communion or went forth from the Society of any Elder Church I pray you satisfie me in these particulars 1. Whose company did she leave 2. From what body went she forth 3. Where was the true Church she forsook For it appears not a little strange that a Church should be accounted Schismatical when there cannot be assigned any other Church different from her which from age to age since Christs time hath continued visible from whence she departed Thus far the Papists Manuscript An Answer to the foregoing Argument IF the Author of this Argument thinks as he speaks it s a case to be lamented with tears of blood that the Church of Christ should be abused and the souls of men deluded by men of so great ignorance But if he know that he doth but juggle and deceive it s as lamentable that any matter of Salvation should fall into such hands 1. This Argument I have before answered Detect 13. The word Church here is ambiguous and either signifieth 1. A particular Church which is an Association of Christians for personal Communion in Gods worship 2. Or divers such Associations or Churches Associated for Communion by their officers or delegates for unity sake 3. Or else it may signifie some one Mistris Church that is the Ruler of all the rest in the world 4. Or else it may signifie the Universal Catholick Church it self which containeth all the particular Churches in the world The Papist should not have plaid either the blind man or the Jugler by confounding these and never telling us which he means 1. For the first we grant him that Rome was once an excellent flourishing Church And so was Ephesus Hierusalem Philippi Colosse and many more 2. As to the second sence it is humane or from Church custom so to take the word Church for Scripture that I find doth not so use it But for the thing we are indifferent Though it cannot be proved that in Scripture times Rome had any more then a particular Church yet it s all one as to our cause 3. As to the third and fourth senses we deny as confidently as we do that the Sun is darkness that ever in Scipture times Rome was either a Mother to all Churches or the Ruler and Mistris of all or yet the Universal Church it self Prove this and I will turn Papist But there 's not a word for it in the Texts cited but an intimation of much against it Paul calleth Rome a Church and commendeth its faith True but doth he not so by the Thessalonians Colossians Ephesians Philippians c. and John by the Philadelphians Pergamus Thyatira and others as well And will not this prove that Rome was but such a particular Church as one of them The citation of Protestants are done it seems by one that never read them nor would have others read them which makes him turn us to whole books to search for them if we have nothing else to do and to miscited places But we know that all our Divines confess that Rome was once a true and famous particular Church but never the Universall Church nor the Ruler of the world or of all other Churches in Pauls dayes Would you durst lay your cause on this and put it to the tryal Why else did never Paul make one word of mention of this Power and honour nor send other Churches to her to be Governed And now I pray consider to what purpose is the rest of your reasoning What is it to me whether Rome be turned either
conversed with them or that there are many more worlds of men besides this earth or that Christ instituted twenty Sacraments how should we deal with these men but hy denying their fictions as sinfull Novelty and rejecting them as corrupt additions to the Faith And were this any Novelty in us And should they bid us prove in the express words of Scripture or antiquity our Negative Propositions that Christ gave but one form of prayer that he did not oft descend that he gave no more Decalogues Sacraments c. Is it not a sufficient proof of any of these that they are not written and that no Tradition of them from the Apostles is proved and that they that hold the Affirmative and introduce the Novelty must prove and not we Our Articles of faith are the same and not increased nor any new ones added But the Papists come in with a new faith as large as all the Novelties in the Decretals and the Councils and these innovations of theirs we reject Now our Rejections do not increase the Articles of our faith no more then my beating a dog out of my house or keeping out an enemy or sweeping out the filth doth enlarge my house or increase my family They do not take all the Anathema and Rejections in their own Councils to be Canons or Articles of faith For example The Pope hath made it an Article of faith that no Scripture is to be interpreted but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers This wereject and make it no Article of our faith but an erroneous Novelty Do we hereby make a new Article because we reject a new one of theirs yea a part of the Oath of their Church made by Pope Pius after the Council of Trent 1. If this be an Article prove it if you can 2. If it be a Truth and no Novelty I pray you tell us which be Fathers and which not and help us to know certainly when we have all or the unanimous Consent And then tell us whether every man is not forsworn with you that interprets any text of Scripture before he have read all the Fathers or any text which six of them never expounded or any text which they do not unanimously agree on And yet though it be not our necessary task we can easily prove to you that this is a New Article of your devising 1. Because else no man must expound any Scripture at all before these Fathers were born For how could the Church before them have their unanimous consent And 2. Because that otherwise these Fathers themselves wanted an Article of faith unless it was an Article to them that they must expound no Scripture but by their own Consent 3. Because these Fathers do few of them expound all or half or the twentieth part of the Scripture 4. Because they took liberty to disagree among themselves and therefore do not unanimously consent in abundance of particular texts 5. Because they tell us that they are fallible and bid us not take it on their trust 6. Because the Apostles have left us no such rule or precept but much to the contrary 7. Your own Doctors for all their Oath do commonly charge the Fathers with error and misexpounding Scripture as I shewed before Canus and many others charge Cajetan a Cardinal and pillar in your Church with making it his practise to differ from the Fathers and choosing expositions purposely for the Novelty pro more suo as his custom And when he hath highly extolled Cajetan Loc. Theol. lib. 7. pag. 223. he adds that yet his doctrine was defiled with a Leprosie of errors by an affection and lust of Curiosity or confidence on his wit expounding Scripture as he list happily indeed for the most part but in some few places more acutely then happily because he regarded not antient Tradition and was not verst in the reading of the Fathers and would not learn from them the Mysteries of the sealed book And in another place he blames him that he alway followed the Hebrew and Greek text And many other Papists by him and others are blamed for the same faults Andradius and more of the later plead for it And yet these men are counted members of your Church that go against an Article of your new faith and Oath So Transubstantiation is one of your New Articles in that Oath Do we make a New one now if we reject it Or need we be put to prove the Negative And yet we can easily do it And Edm. Albertinus among many others hath done it unanswerably Another of your Articles is that it belongeth to your Holy Mother the Church to judge of the true sence of Scripture And you mean the Roman Church and that they must judge of it for all the Christian world Prove this to be the Antient doctrine if you can If we reject this Novelty are we Innovators or need we prove the Negative And yet we can do it and have oft done it at large Did Athanasius Basil Nazianzen Nyssen Augustine Hierom Chrysostome Epiphanius and the rest of the Fathers send to Rome for the sence of the Scriptures which they expound or did they procure the Popes Approbation before any of them published their Commentaries You know sure that they did not The like may be said of all the rest of your New Articles and Practises We stand our ground Some of your Novelties we reject as trifles some as smaller errors and some as greater but still we keep to our antient faith of which the Scripture is a full and sufficient Rule as Vincentius Lirinens ubi supra though we are glad of all helps to understand it we say with Tertullian de carne Christi cap. 6. Nihil de eo constat quia Scriptura non exhibet Non probant quia non Scriptum est His qui insuper argumentantur nos resistemus CHAP. XXXVII Detect 28. ANother of their Deceits is this They make advantage of our charitable Judgement of them and of their uncharitable judgement of us and all other Christians to affright and entice people to their sect They say that we cannor be saved nor any that are not of the Roman Church But we say that a Papist may be saved They say that we want abundance of the Articles of faith that are of necessity to salvation We say that the Papists hold all that is necessary to salvation Luther saith that the Kernel of true faith is yet in the Church of Rome therefore say they Let Protestants take the shell And hence they make the simple people believe that even according to our own Confessions their Church and way is safer then ours I have answered this formerly in my Safe Religion but yet shall here once more shew you the nakedness of this Deceit 1. The Papists denying the faith and salvation of all other Christians doth no whit invalidate our faith nor shake our salvation Our Religion doth not cease to be true when ever a peevish
Religion as if they were so many Articles of our Faith or at least were the common doctrines of our Churches They will not give us leave to do so by them when yet we have much more reason for it For 1. They teach the People that they are bound to believe as their Teachers bid them and they reproach us for confessing that we are not in all points of Doctrine infallible And yet we still confess this fallibility and say in plain terms that we know but in part 2. Divers of their particular Doctors that we use to cite are such as the Pope hath Canonized for Saints and they tell us that in Canonizing he is infallible And therefore an Infallibly Canonized Saint must not be supposed to err in a point of faith 3. They boast so much of Unity and Concent among themselves that we may the better cite particular Doctors And yet we think our selves bound to stand to their own Law in this and to charge nothing on them as the faith of their Church but what their Church doth own and therefore while they refuse to stand to particular Doctors we will not urge them to it for its good reason that all men should be the Professors of their own belief But what reason is there then that we may not have the same measure from them which they expect We profess to take no man nor Council of men for the Lords of our faith but for the Helpers of our faith They tell us that they know not where to find our Religion We tell them it is entirely in the written word of God and that we know no other Infallible Rule because we know no other Divine Revelation supposing what in Nature is revealed They tell us that All Hereticks do pretend to Scripture and therefore this cannot be the Test of our Religion I answer that so all cavillers and defrauders and extortioners may pretend to the Law of the Land to undo poor men by quirks of wit or tire them with vexatious suits And yet it follows not that we must seek another Rule of Right and take the Law for insufficient And what if Hereticks pretend to Tradition to General Councils and the Decretals of the Popes as you know how frequently they do Will you yield therefore that these are an infufficient Rule or Test of your own Religion Open your eyes and judge as you would be judged But I will come to some of the particular Opinions which they charge us with And because I know not a more weighty renowned Champion of their cause then Cardinal Richleiu then Bishop of Lucion I shall take notice of his twelve great errors which he so vehemently chargeth on the Reformed Churches as contrary to the Scripture And sure I shall do much to make clean our Churches if I fully wipe off all the pretended blots of errour that so wise a man could charge upon them In his Defens contra script 4. Ministr Charenton cap. 2. pag. 12. c. he begins his enumeration thus 1. The Scripture saith Jam. 2. that a man is not Justified by Faith only but you say that he is Justified by Faith alone and by Faith only which is found in no place of Scripture and do you not then resist the Scriptures Answ 1. We believe both the words of Paul and James that a man is Justified by Faith without the Deeds of the Law and saved through Faith not of works lest any man should boast Rom. 3. 28. Ephes 2. 8 9. and also that a man is Justified by works and not by Faith only Jam. 2 Did not this Learned man know that we believe all the Bible why then should he charge us with denying that which we retain and publickly read in our Churches as the word of God Did he think that we set so much by Luthers or any mans writings as by the Bible 2. But if he can prove that we understand not these words aright he should have evinced it better then by the use of the words Faith alone For our Churches by Faith alone do profess openly to mean no more then Paul doth by Faith without works And can they find fault with Paul 3. Indeed we are not all agreed upon the fittest Notion of the interest of Faith and works in our Justification but our difference is more in words and notions then matter of which see my Disput of Justification 4. And. why do you not quarrel with your own Cardinal Contarenus de Justif and others of your own that joyn with us in the doctrine of Justification His second Accusation is The Scripture saith that we can Love God with all the heart you say that no man can Love God with all the heart which is no where read in Scripture and yet do you not resist the Scriptures Answ 1. Unprofitable Confusion we distinguish between Loving God with all the Heart as it signifieth the sincerity and predominant degree of Love and so every true Christian hath it and as it signifieth some extraordinary degree above this meer sincerity and so some eminent stronger Christians have it and as it signifieth the highest Degree which is our duty and which excludeth all sinful imperfection And thus we say that no man actually doth Love God perfectly in this life nor do we think he speaks like a Christian that dare say Lord I Love thee so much that I will not be beholden to thee to forgive the imperfection of my Love or to help me against any sinful imperfection of it Your own Followers whom you admire as the highest Lovers of God do oft lament the imperfections of their Love as M. de Renty for instance in his Life But now if the question be only of the posse and not the act we say that the Potentia naturalis is in all and the Potentia Moralis which is the Habit is in the sanctified but this Moral Power is not perfect it self that is of the highest degree and without any sinful imperfection though yet it hath the perfection of sincerity and in some the perfection of an eminent degree And will not this content you His third Accusation is The Scripture saith that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ with the adjunction of those words that signifie a true Body and Blood you say that it is not Christs Body and Blood but only a figure sign and testimony which the Scripture no where saith Answ 1. The Scripture saith not that it is his Body and Blood substantially or by Transubstantiation And we say not as you feign that it is not his Body and Blood but a figure c. For we say that it is his Body and Blood Sacramentally and Representatively as he that personateth a King on some just account is called a King and as in actions of Investiture and Delivery the delivering of a Key is the delivering of the House and the delivery of a twig and turf is the delivery of the Land and the deliverer
may say Take this is my House this is my Land which I deliver thee If you be among many Images in a room you will not blame him that saith This is Peter and this is Paul and this is the Virgin Mary 2. The Scripture often calls it Bread after the Consecration which you condemn us for therefore we are taught to call it so 3. The Scripture saith 1 Cor. 10. 4. That Rock was Christ and he saith I am the door John 10. 7. I am the true Vine John 15. 1. David saith I am a worm and no man Psal 22. 6. we believe all this But must we be therefore reproached if we say that David was a man that the Rock was Christ typically that he was a Vine and Door Metaphorically only And yet these are as plain as This is my Body and This is my Blood His fourth Accusation is The Scripture saith that Baptism saveth us and that we are cleansed and regenerate by the washing of water On the contrary you say that Baptism doth neither save us nor regenerate us but is only to us a symbol of salvation ablution and regeneration which is no where said in Scripture Answ A childish contest about words we say that two things go to our full possession of our state of Regeneration Justification and Cleansing One is our fundamental Right which the Promise of the Gospel gives us upon our Heart consent or Covenant with God the other is our Solemn Investiture in regard of the former we are Christians and Regenerate and Justified before Baptism In regard of the later we are made Christians regenerate justified saved by Baptism This we commonly hold and so never denyed what you falsly say we deny As a man is made a King by his Coronation that yet in a sort was one before or as Marriage makes them Husband and Wife by publick solemnization that were fundamentally so before by Private Covenant or as possession is given by a Key a twig and a turf as I said of that which a man had right to before so are we solemnly invested with those benefits by baptism which we had a fundamental Title to before Do not your own writers confess this of a man that is Baptized many years after he had Faith and Charity Do you think Cornelius and the rest that had the Holy Ghost before Baptism Act. 10. had not Justification before Do you think that Constantine the great was unpardoned unregenerate and no Christian till he was Baptized Or rather would you make quarrels against your own Confessions His fifth Accusation is Scripture saith that Priests do forgive sin on the contrary you say that they do not remit them but only testifie that they are remitted which the Scriptures no where say Answ As if Testification could not be a Remission We say that whose sins the Pastors of the Church remit they are remitted Do you not know that these very words were used to every Presbyter in our Ordination here in England We say 1. That Pastors do as Gods Embassadors proclaim his General Conditional Pardon unto all 2. That they are Gods Ministers to make a particular Application and delivery of pardon in Baptism on supposition that the Baptized be qualified for pardon 3. That they are as his Ministers to make the same Application by Declaration and Delivery in the Absolution of the Penitent on supposition that their penitence be sincere 4. And as Church Governours they may on good considerations sometimes remit some humbling disgraceful acts that were imposed on the penitent for the testification of his repentance and the satisfaction of the Church And are not these four concessions enough Or are you minded to pick quarrels that your selves and others may have fewel for the rancour and uncharitableness of your minds But indeed we do not think that any man can primarily as the chief Agent forgive sins but God must be the first pardoner Nor that any man can pardon the sins of the dead and abate or shorten the pains of the soul in a fire called Purgatory Here we leave you And verily if the Pope have power to remit but the very temporal punishment he is a cruel wretch that will not forgive men even good men the torments of the Gout and the Stone and an hundred diseases nay that will not remit them to himself no nor the pains of death when he is so loath to die But I forgot that the Pope hath no body to forgive him because none above him He that connot remit the punishments which we see and feel how shall we believe him without any Divine Testimony that he can remit a penalty that he never saw nor felt nor no man else that can be proved His sixth Accusation is Scripture saith If a Virgin marry she sinneth not but you say that the just sin in all works which Scripture mentions not Answ 1. Do you believe in your Conscience that the Scripture meaneth that a Virgin sinneth not at all in any circumstance or defect in the manner or Concomitants of her Marriage Then I pray tell your Nuns so that if they marry they sin not Tell Priests so that if they marry they sin not Your own reason can expect no other sense in the words but that Marriage as such is no sin to the Virgin And this we grant But yet if you think that in this or in any other work you see God as apprehensively and believe as strongly and restrain every wandring thought as exactly and Love God as much as you are bound to do by the very Law of Nature it self so that you are perfectly blameless and need not be beholden to the blood of Christ to the Mercy of God to the Spirit of Grace either for the forgiveness of these failings or the cure of them you shew then a proud Pharisaical spirit unacquainted with it self and with the Gospel Do you go on and say Lord I thank thee that I am not as other men and I will rather say Lord be mercifull to me a sinner and which shall be rather justified Christ hath told us The streams cannot be perfectly sinless till the fountain be so and Who can say I have made my heart clean I am pure from my sin Prov. 20. 9. For there is not a just man upon earth that doth good and sinneth not Eccl. 7. 20. Christ telleth us that the fruit will be like the Tree the actions like the heart and therefore an imperfect Heart will have imperfect duties If you dare say there is no remnant of sin in your hearts you have so much of it that hindereth you from seeing it Humility and self-knowledge would soon end this controversie We say not that all our works are sins that is either materially forbidden or done in wickedness and from vicious predominant habits But that the same works which Materially are good are tainted with our sinfull imperfections having not in them that measure of knowledge faith love c. as
we ought to have and therefore that we must beg pardon for our imperfections and fly to the blood and merits of Christ through whom God will accept both our works and us for all the imperfections which he pardoneth to us of his grace His seventh Accusation is Scripture saith that there are wicked men and reprobates that believe in Christ But you contend that they believe not but have only a shadow of faith which no Scripture saith Answ Again a quarrel about the name of faith unworthy serious men We say that Reprobates do believe and we say that they believe not taking belief in different senses We believe what ever the Scripture saith even that the Devils believe and tremble and yet as Believers and Christians are all one we are loath to call the Devils Believers and Christians but you may do it if you please As Belief signifieth a bare uneffectuall conviction or superficial Assent which you call fides informis so we still confess that the wicked may believe But as Belief signifieth our Receiving of Christ and Coming to him and being planted into him as his members and taking him heartily as Christ our Lord and Saviour and so becoming Christians and Disciples as it signifieth such a faith that hath the promise of pardon of sin of Adoption and of Glory so we say that the wicked have but a shew or shadow of it And this is the sense of the words of Calvin P. Martyr Beza and Danaeus whom you cite And do you not think so your selves Indeed you know not what to believe in this as I have shewed in Postscript to my Disput of Sacraments His eighth Accusation is this Scripture saith that there are some that believe for a time and after at another time believe not You deny that there are any that believe for a time and then fall from faith and that he that once believeth doth ever lose that faith which is not in any Scripture to be found Answ It is too light in serious matters to play thus upon words 1. We still maintain that there are some that believe but for a time and afterward fall away but we say it is but with an uneffectual or common assent that they believe such as you call fides informis Your accusation therefore is false The semen vitae and faith that Calvin speaks of in the place which you cite is meant only of a saving faith such as you call fides charitate formata If any of you think that faith is called charitate formata or justifying or saving faith only by an extrinsecal denomination from a concomitant and that there is no difference in the faith it self between that of the unjustified and of the justified you are mistaken against all reason Your own Philosophers frequently maintain that the will which is the seat of charity followeth the practical dictates of the Intellect which is the seat of Assent And therefore according to those Philosophers a Practical Belief must needs be accompanyed with charity And those that deny this do yet maintain that a powerfull clear Assent of the Intellect will infallibly procure the determination of the Will though every assent will not and though it do it not Necessarily So that on that account and in common reason there must needs be an intrinsick difference between that Assent which prevaileth with the will to determine it self and that which cannot so prevail And therefore your unformed and your formed faith have some intrinsick difference 2. the Lutherans that are half the Protestants do think that justifying faith may be lost So that be it right or wrong you cannot charge this on them all 3. The rest which be not of their mind do hold a brotherly communion with them and therefore take not that point to be of so much moment as to break communion 4. Are you not at odds among your selves about perseverance some laying it first on mans free will and some with Austin ascertaining perseverance to the Elect because Elect and laying it on Gods free Gift and some Jesuites and School men affirming that the confirmed in Grace are not only certain to persevere but that they necessarily believe and are saved and cannot mortally sin strange doctrine for a Jesuite Of all this controversie of perseverance I desire the Reader to see a few sheets called An Account of my Judgement hereabout When I wrote those I knew not whom Alvarez meant lib. 10. Disp 104. pag. 419. § 1. de Auxil When he disputed against this sort of men But since I find it in his Respons ad Object Lib. 2. cap. 9. pag. 522 c. Where he tells us that it is the Jesuite Greg. de Valentia Tom. 2. disp 8. q. 3. punct 4. § 2. Tom. 1. d 1. q. 23. punct 4. § 7. Ubi docet non solum esse praeelectos ut salventur sed ut necessario salventur ac per consequens non posse peccare Mortaliter Necessario persever are in gratia ac eatenus non libere sed necessario salvari And also that he meant Alexand. Ales 3. p. q. 9. Et Almainin 3. d. 11. q. 2. Qui asserunt confirmatos in Gratia non habere libertatem c. Quam sententiam Medina impugnat 3. p. q. 27. art 4. This is more then Protestants say And yet will you quarrell His ninth Accusation is this Scripture saith If thou will enter into life keep the commandments You say that there is no need of keeping the Commandments and that he that saith it doth deny Christ and abolish faith of which the Scripture speaketh not a word Answ Still confusion playes your game and you strive about words We distinguish between the keeping of that Law of Works or Nature which made perfect obedience the only condition of Life and the keeping of the Law of Moses as such and the keeping of the Law of Christ For the two first we say that no man can be justified by the works of the Law Is this a doubt among Papists that believe Pauls Epistles But as for the Law of Christ as such we must endeavour to keep it perfectly thats necessary necessitate praecepti and must needs keep it sincerely necessitate medii if we will be saved This all Protestants that ever I spoke with are agreed in And dare any Papist deny it If we be not all nor you neither agreed on the sense of that text of Scripture yet are we agreed on the doctrine and yet you quarrel His tenth Accusation is Scripture saith that some that were illuminated and made partakers of the Holy Ghost did fall and crucifie again to themselves the Son of God But you defend that whoever is once partaker of the Holy Ghost cannot fall from his Grace which Scripture speaketh not Answ The same again and a meer untruth We still maintain that those words of Scripture are of certain truth But we distinguish between the common and the speciall gifts of the Spirit The common
gifts may be lost we never denyed it The special gifts that accompany salvation some of us judge are never lost others of us think are left only by those that are not predestinate as Austin thought and your Dominicans think And what cause is here of your quarrell His eleventh Accusation is this Scripture saith that God taketh away and blotteth out our iniquity as a cloud and puts our iniquities far from us as the East is from the West and maketh us as white as snow You say that he takes not away nor blotteth out our sin but only doth not impute it and doth not make us white as snow but leaveth in us the fault and uncleaness of sin which Scripture no where speaks Answ This is half falshood and half confusion raked up to make a matter of quarrel with 1. It s false that we say He doth not take away nor blot out our sin nor make us white as snow Do not all Protestants in the world affirm all this 2. There are these things here considerable 1. The Act of sin 2. The Habit 3. The guilt or obligation to punishment 4. The culpability or reatus culpae 1. As for the Act how can you for shame say that God takes it away when it is a transient act that is gone of it self as soon as acted and hath no existence as Scotus and all your own take notice 2. As to the Culpability you will not sure for shame say that God so put away e. g. Davids Adultery as to make it reputable as a vertue or not a vice 3. As to the Reatus ad paenam the full Guilt we maintain that it is done quite away and if your eyes be in your head you may see that it is in regard of this guilt and punishment that the Scriptures mentioned by you speak or principally speak at least For I pray you tell us what else can they mean when they speak of actual sins that are past long ago and have no existence Learned wranglers would you make us believe that Grace is given to David to put away the Act of his Murder and Adultery so that it may be quid praeteritum non jam existens a thing past and gone which it is without grace so that when you feign us to say that God takes not away sin but only not imputeth it you feign us to make synonymal terms to be of different sences He takes them away by not imputing them 4. But if you speak not of the sence of a particular Text but of the Matter in difference it can be nothing but the habit of sin that you mean that we say that God takes not away And here you play partly the Calumniators and partly the erroneous Pharisees 1. You Calumniate in feigning us to deny that habitual sin is done away Because our Divines say that it is not the work of meer pardon which we call Justification to put it away therefore you falsly say that we hold it is not put away at all whereas we hold without one contradicting vote that ever I read or heard that all that are Justified are Sanctified Converted Regenerate Renewed and must live an holy life And that all their sins are so far destroyed that they shall not have dominion over them that Gross and Wilfull sin they forsake and the least infirmities they groan and pray and strive against to the last and then obtain a perfect conquest 2. But if you mean that no degree of habitual or dispositive sin or absence of holy qualities remaineth in the Justified soul it is a Pharasaical error yea worse then a Pharisee durst have owned And it seems this is your meaning by the words of Calvins which you cite And dare you say that you have no sin to resist or purge or pardon Are you in Heaven already The whole have no need of the Physitian but the sick and have you no need of Christ to heal your soul would you be no better then you are O proud souls and strange to themselves and the purity of the Law Hath not the Holy Ghost pronounced him a Lyar and Self-deceiver that saith he hath no sin 1 Joh. 1. 8. 10. In many things we offend all Jam. 3. 2. I shall but recite to you two Canons of a Council which if you use the Lords prayer are fit for you to consider Concil Milevit cont Pelagianos Can. 7. Item placuit ut quicunque dixerit in Oratione Dominica ideo dicere sanctos Dimitte nobis Debita nostra ut non pro seipsis hoc dicant quia non est eâ— jam necessaria ista sed pro aliis qui sunt in suo populo peccatores ideo non dicere unumquemque sanctorum Dimitte mihi debita mea sed Dimitte nobis debita nostra ut hoc pro aliis potius quam pro se Justus petere intelligatur Anathema sit Can. 8. Item placuit ut quicunque verba ipsa Dominicae Orationis ubi dicimus Dimitte nobis debita nostra ista volunt à Sanctis dici ut humiliter non veraciter hoc dicatur Anathema fit Quis enim ferat Oraâ—tem non hominibus sed ipsi Domino mentientem qui labiis sibi dicit dimitti velle Corde dicit quae sibi dimittantur debita non habere You see here the Council curseth all those as intolerable Lyars that say the Lords prayer desiring him daily to forgive or remit their sins and yet think that they have no sins to forgive yea or that every Saint hath not such sins What can a Papist say to this but by making Councils as void of sence as they feign the holy Scriptures to be Hus twelfth and last Accusation is this The Scripture saith that Blessedness in the Reward the Prize the Penny the wages of Labourers and the Crown of Righteousness you contend that its meerly the free gift of God and not a Reward which no Scripture doth affirm Answ A meer Calumny and perverting of Calvins words who often saith as we constantly do that Eternal life is given as a Reward and Crown of Righteousness But we distinguish between the Act of God in his Gospel Promise which is a Conditional Deed of Gift of Christ and Life to all that will Accept them and the execution of this by Judgement and Glorification And we say that it was Antecedenter meerly of Gods free Grace that he made such a Deed of Gift the blood of Christ being the purchasing cause and nothing of our works had a handin the procurement Dare you deny this But that our Justification in Judgement and our Glorification which are the Execution of the Law of Grace do make our works the Reason not as having merited it ex proportione operis or in Commutative Justice but as having performed the condition of the free Gift and so being the persons to whom it doth belong And this is the sense of Scotus and of one half of the Papists for still you
as gross as common even an abuse of Cyprians words l. 1. Ep. 3. where Cyprian speaks for the necessity of obeying One in the Church meaning a particular Church as the whole scope of his Epistle testifieth And this man would make them simple believe that he speaks of the Universal Church His Reasons proceed thus First p. 128. c. he tells us that the invisible God thinks meet to Govern the world by visible men Answ And who denies that Christ also governeth his Church by men But he concludeth hence Num alia ratione c. Shall we believe that Christ doth govern his Church in another way then God governeth the whole world Answ Reader doth not this man give up the cause of the Pope and say as much against it fundamentally as a Protestant Saith Boverins We must not believe that Christ doth govern the Church in another way then God doth govern the world But saith common sense and experience God doth not govern the whole world by any one or two or ten Universal Vice-monarch Therefore Christ doth not Govern the Church by any one Universal Vice-monarch His next Reason is Because Christ was a visible Monarch once on earth himself And if the Church had need of a visible Monarch then it hath need of it still Answ 1. Here the Reader may see that it is to no less then to be Christs successor or a Vice-christ that the Pope pretendeth And then the Reason if it were of any worth would as well prove that there must be one on earth still that may give the Holy Ghost immediately and make Articles of Faith de novo and Laws for the Church with promise of Salvation and may appoint new Offices and orders in the whole Church c. And why not one also to live without sin and to die for our sins and rise again and be our Saviour And why not one to give us his own body and blood in the Sacrament 2. Christ himself doth oppose himself to all terrestrial inhabitans saying One is your Master even Christ And what then why Be not ye called Masters But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant And Be not ye called Rabbi for one is your Master even Christ and all ye are Brethren Mat. 23. 8. 9 10 11 12. where most evidently he shews that neither Peter or any of his own Disciples were to be called Masters as Christ was nor was any such to be on earth and so no Vice-christ yea that all his Apostles being Brethren were not to be Masters one to another but servants so that here is a plain bar put in against any of Peters Mastership or Headship of the Universal Church 3. We do on these and many other Reasons deny your consequence It follows not that we must still have a Christ on earth because we once had 4. Christ hath chosen another Vicar though invisible as Tertullian calls him and that is the Holy Ghost whom he sent to make such supply as was necessary by various gifts proportioned to the several states and members of the Church 5. If Christ would have left a Vice-christ upon earth which should have been an Essential part even the Head of his Church he would doubtless have plainly expressed it in Scripture and described his Office and Power and given him directions to exercise it and us directions how to know which is he and to obey him But there is not a word of any such matter in the Scripture nor Antiquity when yet it is a point if true of such unspeakable importance 6. You might at well feign that if it were then necessary to have twelve or thirteen Apostles it is so still and if then it was necessary to have the gift of tongues and miracles it is so still which yet the Pope himself is void of 7. It is not enough for your silly wit to say its fit that Christ have a Successor therefore he hath one but let him that claimeth so high an honour as to be the Vice-christ produce his Commission and prove his claim if he will be believed 8. Christ is still the visible Head of his Church seen in Heaven and as much seen over all the world except Judea and Egypt as ever he was When he was on earth he was not visible at Rome Spain Asia c. He that is Emperor of the Turkish Monarchy perhaps was never personally an hundred miles from Constantinople The King of Spain is no visible Monarch in the West-Indies And if all the world except Judea might be without a Present Christ then why that may not as well as the rest you must give him an account if you will tie him to be here resident 9. And yet if the Pope would usurp no more Power then Christ exercised visibly on earth it would not be all so bad as it is or hath been He would not then divide inheritances nor be a temporal Prince nor wear a Triple Crown nor keep so glorious a Court and Retinue nor depose Princes nor deny them tribute nor exempt his Prelates from it nor from their judgement Seats nor absolve their Subjects from their fidelity c. nor trouble the world as now he doth He would not exercise the power of putting any to death much less would he set up Inquisitions to burn poor people for reading the Scriptures or no being of his mind Pag. 133. He makes Christ the visible Pope while he was on earth and tells us that Promulgating the Gospel sending Apostles instituting Sacraments c. were Pontificalia munera Papal Offices Answ And indeed was Christ a Pope and is the Pope a Christ Jesus I know and Peter and Paul I know but this Vice-christ I know not If indeed the Vice-christ have power to do these Papal works to promulgate a new Gospel to send out Apostles to institute Sacraments c. as Christ did let us but know which be the Popes Sacraments and which be Christs which be the Popes Apostles and which be Christs and which is the Popes Gospel and which is Christs and we shall use them accordingly The Law and Testimony will help us to distinguish them Pag. 134. He comes to prove that Christ hath a Successor and his first proof is from Mic. 2. Let the Reader peruse it and judge without any help of mine what proof there is that the Pope is a Vice-christ The next is in Hosea 1. which speaketh of the return of the Israelites from Captivity Let the Reader make his best on it for the Pope for I think it not worth my labour to confute the Papists impudent perverting such Texts as these By the way he tells us as Card. Richlieu and the rest commonly do that its no dishonour to Christ to have a Deputy no more then for the King of England to have a Deputy or Vice-king in Ireland Answ 1. But our first question is Whether de facto such a thing be Prove that Christ hath Commissioned a
good sadness did God send John the twenty second alias the twenty third to extinguish Heresies with all those Abominations and all that Infidelity that was charged on him by a General Council And was John the thirteenth a Vice christ to extinguish Heresies by all that diabolical villany that he was deposed for by a Council 3. And for calling Councils they have learnt more wit since Constance and Basil have let them know what Councils mean to do by them Unless they can pack up forty or fifty or what if it were an hundred or two hundred as they did at Trent to say their lesson as it was brought to them from Rome and to call themselves a General Council for folks to laugh at them Is this all that we must have a Vice-Christ for How many General Councils did the Pope call for six hundred years after Christ Tell us without Lying and let us see why he was created The seventh Reason is That the Divine Institution of Christ and the plain Scripture about Peters Primacy may take place Answ 1. Where shall a man that hath eyes find your pretended institution The blind may sooner find it by the half 2. Primacy and Monarchy are not all one And Bellarmine can tell you that its one thing to be the first Apostle and another thing to be the Vice-christ to the Church Universal Peter was none such 3. No nor was he properly any more the Bishop of Rome then of many another place Antioch claims the inheritance by birth-right as Peters first supposed seat and Jerusalem before them both Well Reader thou seest now how Babel is built and what is the strongest stuff that the learned Spaniards had to assault Prince Charls with For verily I have not bawkt their strength And were it not for the loss of precious time to you and me I would quickly thus shew you the vanity of abundance more of their most applauded writings CHAP. XLIII Detect 34. ANother of their Devices is to take nothing as Evidence from Scripture but the Letters or express words They will not endure to hear of consequences no nor Synonimal expressions Bellarmine himself saith de verb. Dei lib. 3. cap. 3. Convenit inter nos adversarios ex solo literali sensu peti de bere argumenta efficacia nam eum sensum qui ex verbis immediate colligitur certum est sensum esse spiritus sancti But this may admit a fair interpretation It was Cardinal Peronius in his Reply against King James that is judged the deviser of this Deceit but Gonterius and Veronius the Jesuites have perfected it I shall say but little of it because it is already detected and refelled by Paul Ferrius 1618. and Isaaccus Chorinus 1623. and Nic. Vedelius 1628. at large Yea Vedelius shews cap. 6. p. 50. c. that it was hatcht in Germany by the Lutherans for the defending of Consubstantiation and from them borrowed by the Revolter Perron For our parts the cunning Sophisters shall find us very Reasonable with them in this point but if they be faln out with Reason it self there 's no way to please them but by turning bruits And we will not buy their favour at those rates Our judgement in this point I shall lay down distinctly though briefly as followeth 1. The Holy Scripture is the Doctrine Testament and Law of Christ And we shall add nothing to it nor take ought from it The use of it as a doctrine is to inform us of the will of God in the points there written The use of it as a Testament is to signifie to us the last will of our Lord concerning our duty and Salvation The use of it as a Law is to appoint us our Duty and Reward or Punishment and to be the Rule of our obedience and in a sort the Rule by which we shall be judged 2. All Laws are made to Reasonable creatures and suppose the use of Reason for the understanding them To use Reason about the Law is not to add to the Law 3. The subject must have this use of Reason to discern the sence of the Law that he may obey it And the judge must Rationally pass the sentence by it 4. This is the Application of the Law to the fact and person And though the fact and person be not in the Law yet the Application of the Law to the fact and person is no addition to it Otherwise to use any such thing would be to add to it 5. As the fact is distinct from the Law so must the sentence of the Judge be which results from both 6. To speak the same sence or thing in equipollent terms is not to add to the Law in matter or sence 7. Yet we maintain the Scripture sufficiency in suo genere in terms and sence So that we shall confess that equipollent words are only Holy Scripture as to sence but not as to the terms 8. But there is no Law but may many wayes be broken and no Doctrine but may be divers wayes opposed And therefore though we yield that nothing but the express words of God are the Scripture for terms and sence yet many thousand words may be against Scripture that be not there expresly forbidden in terms 9. The Law of Nature is Gods Law and the Light of Nature is his Revelation And therefore that which the Light of Nature seeth immediately in Nature or that which it seeth from Scripture and Nature compared together and soundly concludeth from these premises is truly a revelation from God 10. The Conclusion followeth the more debile of the Premises in point of evidence or certainty to us Where Scripture is the more debile there the conclusion is of Scripture faith but where the fact or Proposition from the Light of Nature is more debile there the conclusion is of Natural Evidence But in both of Divine discovery For there is no Truth and Light but from God the Father of Lights This is our judgement herein Now for the Papists you may see their folly thus 1. If nothing but the bare words of a Law may be heard in Tryals then all Laws in the world are void and vain For the subjects be not all named in them nor the fact-named And what then have witnesses and jurors and judges to do The Promise saith He that believeth shall be saved But it doth not say that Bellarmine or Veronius believeth Doth it follow that therefore they may make no use of it for the comforting of their souls in the hopes of Salvation The Threatning saith that he that believeth not is condemned But it saith not that such or such a man believeth not should they not therefore fear the threatning 2. By this trick they would condemn Christ himself also as adding to the Law in judgement He will say to them I was hungry and ye fed me not c. But where said the Scripture so that such or such a man fed not Christ It needs not Christ knows
the fact without the Scripture The Scripture is sufficient to its own use to be Rule of Obedience and Judgement but it is not sufficient to every other use which it was never made for The Law said to Cain Thou shalt not murder But it said not to him Thou hast killed thy brother therefore thou shalt die It was the Judges part to deliver this 3. By this trick they would give a man leave to vent any Blasphemy or do any villany changing but the name But they shall find that the Law intended not bare words but by words to signifie things And if they do the things prohibited or hold the opinions condemned what ever names or words they cloath them with they shall feel the punishment 4. By this they would leave almost nothing provable by the Scripture seeing a Papist or Heretick may put the same into other terms and then call for the Proof of that For example they may ask where God commandeth or instituteth any one of the Sacraments in Scripture And when we tell them where Baptism and the Lords Supper were instituted they may reply that there is no mention of Sacraments and so turn real Controversies into verbal 5. Yea it seems by this they would make all Translations to be of little use And a man might lawfully sin in English because God for bad it only in Hebrew and Greek 6. If this be the way of it let us remember that they must in Reason stand to their own Rules Let them tell us then what Scripture saith that Peter was the Vicar of Christ or the Head of the Catholick Church or the Bishop of Rome or that the Pope is his Successor or that the Pope is the Vice-christ or Universal Bishop Where is there express Scripture for any of this Yea so much as Bellarmines Literal sense 7. And why do not these blind and partial men see that the same course also must be taken with their own Laws And that all their Decretals and Canons are insufficient according to these Rules It 's easie for any Heretick to form up his Error into other words then those condemned by Pope or Council And if you go again to the Pope and get him to condemn those new expressions the men in Mexico may use them long to the detriment of the souls of men before the damnatory sentence be brought to them And when it comes they can again word their Heresie anew The Jansenists in France shew how well the Popes decision of wordy Controversies is understood and doth avail But really if they will hold that no part of the Popes Laws oblige but in the literal sense or that none offend that violate not the Letter they will make a great alteration in their affairs And perphaps any of their subjects may Blaspheme the Pope himself in French Dutch Irish English Slavonian c. because he forbids it only in Latine For if Translations be not Gods Word then they are not the Popes word neither A pretty crochet for a Jesuite It is mendacium and not a Lye that the Pope forbids It is said that a Traytor or Murderer may be hang'd but it is not said that such or such a man shall be hang'd or that he was a traytor or murderer Their common instance is The Scripture no where calls it self the whole word of God nor no where tells us which be Canonical Books c. and yet these are Articles of Faith Answ 1. The Scripture doth call it self the Word of God and signifie its own sufficiency and several Books have particular testimonies to be Canonical 2. Though secondarily so far as Scripture affirmeth its own Divinity it be to be beleived yet Primarily that this is Gods Word and that these are the Books and that they are not corrupted and that they are all c. are points of knowledge antecedent in order of nature to Divine Belief of them There are two great Foundations antecedent to the Matter of Divine Faith The one is Gods veracity that God cannot lie The other is His Revelations that This is Gods Word The first is the Formal Object of Faith The second is a Necessary Medium between the formal object and the subject sine quo non without which there is no possibility of Believing The Material object called the Articles of Faith presuppose both these as points of Knowledge proved to us by their proper evidence And that this is All the Word of God is a meer Consequence from the actual Tradition of this much and no more To give you an undenyable illustration by instance Let us enquire which be the Administring Laws of this Common-wealth And we shall find that 1. The Authority of the Law-givers is none of them for that is in the Constitution before the Administration and it is the formale objectum of every Law which is more noble then the Material object 2. And the Promulgation of these Laws is not it self a Law but a necessary Medium sine quo non to the actual obligation of the Law 3. And that there is no other Laws but these is not a Law but a point known by the non-promulgation of more 4. And that all these Laws are the same that they pretend to be and that they are not changed or depraved since this is not a Law neither but a Truth to be proved by Common Reason from the Evidences that may be brought from Records Practise and abundance more So is it in our Case 1. That God is True and the Soveraign Rector is first a point to be known by evidence the one being the formal object of Faith and the other the formal object of obedience and easily proved by Natural Light before we come to Scripture 2. And that this is Gods Revelation or Promulgation of his Law is a point also first to be proved by Reason not before we see the Book or hear the Word but out of the Book or Doctrine it self propria luce together with the full Historical Evidence and many other reasons which in order of Nature lie before our Obligation fide divina to believe So that this is not Primarily an Article of Faith but somewhat higher as being the Necessary Medium of our believing 3. And that there is no other Law or Faith is not Primarily a Law or Article of Faith but a Truth proved by the Non-Revelation or Promulgation of any other to the world He that will prove us obliged to believe more must prove the valid Promulgation or Revelation of more 4. And that these Books are the same and not corrupted is not directly and primarily an Article of Faith but an Historical verity to be proved as abovesaid And yet secondarily Scripture is a witness to all or most of these and so they are de fide But of this I refer the Reader for fuller satisfaction to my Preface before my second Part of the Saints Rest And thus it is manifest that it is an unreasonable demand of
is impossible to most of the world as is before shewed and were it possible it would be so tedious and laborious a course that its ridiculous in most to mention such Appeals Argum. 9. The Soveraign or Head of the Church as of every Body Politick hath power to deprive and denude any other of their power The Pope or General Council hath not power to do so therefore they are not of the Head or Soveraigns of the Church The Major is a known principle in polity He that giveth power can take it away And it 's confessed by the Opponents in this case The Minor I prove 1. Because else it would be in the power of the Pope or Council whether Christ shall have any Ministry and Church or not They may at least make havock of it at pleasure But that 's false 2. As is before said we receive not our power from them therefore they cannot take it from us 3. The Holy Ghost doth make us Over-seers of the flock Act. 20. 28. and lay a Necessity on us and denounce a woe against us if we preach not the Gospel and hath no where given us leave to give over his work if the Pope or a Council shall forbid us 4. And they can shew no Commission from Christ that giveth them such a power Arg. 10. If it were the form or Essence of the Church to have a humane visible Head then our Relation to such a head would be essential to our Membership or Christianity But the Consequence is false therefore so is the Antecedent The falseness of the consequent is apparent 1. In that it cruelly and ungroundedly unchristeneth all that do not believe in such a visible Head That is the greatest part by far of the Christians in the world And 2. By the ensuing argument And the necessity of the consequence is evident of it self Argum. 11. If such a visible Head were essential to the Church and so to our Christianity then should we all be Baptized into the Pope or a General Council as truly and necessarily as we are baptized into the Church But we neither are nor ought to be so baptized into the Pope or a General Council therefore they are not essential to the Church or our Christianity The Major viz. the Consequence is clear and not denyed by the Papists who affirm that Baptism engageth the baptized to the Pope He that is united to the body is united to the head he that is listed into the Army is listed to and under the General He that is entred into the Common-wealth is engaged to the Soveraign thereof But that we are not baptized to the Pope or a General Council is proved 1. Because neither the form of Baptism nor any word in Scripture doth affirm such a thing 2. No persons in Scripture times were so baptized Men were baptized before there was a Pope at Rome or a General Council And afterward none were baptized to them at least for many hundred years otherwise then as they were entred into the particular Church of Rome who were Inhabitants there 3. Never any was baptized to Peter or Paul or any of the Apostles saith Paul 1 Cor. 1. 13. was Paul crucified for you or were ye baptized in the name of Paul They must be baptized into the name of no visible Head but him that was crucified for them 4. The Apostle fully resolveth all the doubt 1 Cor. 12. describing the body into which we are baptized ver 13. And he entitleth it from the head Christ vers 12. but acknowledgeth no other head either co-equal with Christ or subordinate The highest of the other members are called by Paul but eyes and hands and thus Apostles Prophets Teachers Miracles gifts of healing helps Governments are only said to be set in the Church as eyes and hands in the body but not over the Church as the Head or Soveraign Power ver 17 18 19 28 29. so that though he that is baptized into the Church is baptized into an Organical body and related to the Pastors as to hands and eyes yet not as to a head nor as to a representative body neither And me thinks neither Pope nor Council should pretend to be more then Apostles Prophets and Teachers and Governments If the form of baptism had but delivered down the authority of the Pope or a Council as it did the authority and name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Tradition would have been a tolerable Argument for them though Scripture had been silent But when the Baptismal Tradition it self is silent and it is a doctrine so monstruously strange to the Primitive Church that all the baptized are baptized to the Pope or a General Council I know no remedy but they must both put up their pretenses Argum. 12. The Essence of the Church into which they were baptized was part of the doctrine which the Catechumeni were taught and all at age should learn before their baptism The Soveraignty or Headship of Pope or Council was no part of the Doctrine which by the Primitive Church the Catechumeni were taught and ought to learn before their baptism Therefore the Soveraignty or Headship of Pope or Council was not then taken to be of the Essence of the Church The Major is evident 1. In that the Catholick Church was in the Creed and it's essentials there briefly expressed in those terms Holy Catholick Church and Communion of Saints 2. In that Church History fully acquainteth us that it was the practice of the Catethists and other Teachers to open the Creed to them before they baptized them and therein the Article of the Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints The Minor is proved by an induction of all the Records of those times which in gross may now suffice according to our present intended brevity to be mentioned There is no one Writer of many hundred years no not Origen Tertullian Irenaeus or any other that purposely recite the Churches belief which the Catechumeni were taught nor Cyril or John Hierosol or any other who open those Articles to the Catechumens that ever once mention the Doctrine of the Headship of the Pope or Council when they open the Article of the Catholick Church nor yet at any other time If they affirm that they did let them prove it if they can Argum. 13. As it is high Treason in a Republick to deny the Soveraign and to be cut off from him is to be cut off from the Common-wealth so it would be a damning unchristening sin to deny the Headship of the Pope or General Council if they were indeed the Head of the Church But it is no such damning unchristening sin Therefore they are not the Head of the Church The Major is plain from the Nature of Soveraignty The Minor is certainly proved 1. Because it is never mentioned in Scripture nor any ancient Writer for many hundred years as a state of Apostasie nor as a damning sin nor as any sin to deny
weighty a point without intolerable accusation of it The Soveraign Power or Headship of Pope or Council is not revealed in the Holy Scripture Therefore c. They have not yet produced a Text to prove either of them Those produced by the Italians for the Popes Headship are disclaimed by the French as meaning no such thing and our Writers have largely manifested their abusing of the Text. So have they done of those that are brought for the Headship of Councils These texts are spoke to so fully by Chamier Whitaker Amesius and abundance more that I think it in vain to do it here again That of 1 Tim. 3. 15. that the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth doth not speak a word of a General Council nor a word of Headship The whole Church united in Christ is the Pillar and Ground that is the certain Receptacle and retainer of the Truth the Law of Christ being written in their hearts None seems more to favour their concecit then Ephes 4. 15 16. which Grotius fastens on But even that is against them and not for them For 1. It is Christ and only Christ that is here said to be the head and all other parts contradistinguished and excluded from Headship and the Body is not said to be united in them 2. And it is by association and mutual communication of their several gifts that the parts are compacted together and edifie the whole and not by meeting in any one and deriving from it Object But were not the Apostles General Officers and so the Church united in General officers Answ This is little to the Question For 1. the Apostles had one among them to be the Soveraign or Head of the rest but were of equal power 2. Nor did a major part of their whole number make such a Head for the Church to unite in nor do we read that ever a Major vote carryed it among them against a Minor for they were all guided by the Spirit Yet its true that they met ofter together then a General Council can 2. The Apostles as extraordinarily qualified and as the Secretaries of the Spirit have no successors But the Apostles as ambulatory unfixed Ministers had even then many companions For Barnabas Luke Apollo and abundance more did then go up and down preaching as well as the Apostles yet had not any one of them a special charge of Governing all the Churches nor yet all of them united in a body For the Apostles called not the Evangelists and other fellow workers to consult in Councils about the Government of the whole But both they and their helpers did severally what they could to teach and settle the Churches 3. Who be they now that are the Apostles successors If all the Bishops in the world the case is as we left it If any small number of Primates or Patriarcks how shall we know which and how many If they be not twelve why should one Apostle have a successor and not others But there are no twelve only that lay claim to the succession And if you go further who can limit and say who and how many they be and how far the number may be increased or decreased and by whom In Cyprians dayes he and his fellows in the Council at Carthage declare that all Bishops were equal and none had power over other And so thought others in those times Nor was there then any number of Bishops that claimed to be the sole successors of the Apostles to rule all the rest And if they had when the Church increaseth the Rulers must increase But this is not to the main point Argum. 20. The Scripture doth appropriate the Universal Headship to Christ only and deny it to all others therefore neither Pope nor Council are the Universal Head Eph. 5. 23. It is the peculiar Title of Christ to be Head of the Church to whom it must be subject 1 Cor. 11. 3. The Apostle would have us know that the Head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the Head of Christ is God So that there is a particular Head over some parcell of the body below Christ but to be the Universal Head of every man is the proper Title of Christ In 1 Cor. 12. the unity of the body and diversity of the members is more largely expressed then any where else in Scripture and there when the said unity of the body had been so fully mentioned the Apostle comes to name the Head of that Unity Vers 27. which is only Christ Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular The Church is never called the body of the Pope or of a Council but the body of Christ yea as was even now said in the next words the Apostles Prophets and Teachers are enumerated to the particular members contradistinct from the Head so far are all or any one of them from being the head themselves And in Col. 2. 10 17 19. it is Christ only that is called the Head and the body is said to be of Christ and he only is mentioned as the Center of its Unity And not holding the Head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God And Col. 1. 18. And he is the Head of the body the Church If any say that you cannot hence argue Negatively that therefore no one else is the Head I answer They may as well say when it is affirmed that the Lord he is God you cannot thence conclude that Baal is not God The Apostle plainly speaks this of Christ as his peculiar honour And he spoke to men that knew well enough that natural bodies have but one Head unless they be Monsters And he would not so oft insist on this Metaphor intending so great a disparity in the similitude and never discover any such intention So in Ephes 1. 22. He gave him to be Head over all things to the Church which is his Body the fulness of him that filleth all in all And in Ephes 4. the Apostle purposely exhorteth us to the observation of this unity and purposely telleth us by a large enumeration wherein it doth consist but in all he never mentioneth the Pope or a Council yea he plainly excludeth them Vers 3 4. c. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace There is one body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord One Faith One Baptism One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all But unto every one of us is given Grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the Edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the
Faith c. so then you see there is but one Lord of the Church therefore the Pope or Council is not Lord in name or deed And Apostles Prophets Pastors and Doctors are the member contradisting guished from this One Lord and whose diversity is purposely mentioned they being the matter or parcels that must have their unity in some other but not the Church to be united in them Here is then no mention among all these Ones of one earthly Head whether Pope or Council not of One Apostle that was the Head of the rest If such a thing had ever come into the Apostles mind he would sure have mentioned it on such occasions as these and not have quite forgotten it yea and contradict it so evidently 1 Cor. 6. 15 17. Our bodies are the members of Christ not of the Pope and he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit not he that is joined to the Pope Gal. 3. 28. We are all one in Christ Jesus not in an earthly Head Many and many times doth the Apostle exhort them to be of one mind and acord and take heed of schism and maintain peace and he reproveth their divisions at large yet doth he never mention such a sin as dividing from an earthly Head nor ever once direct them to a Pope or General Council as the Center of their unity or the necessary means of curing divisions Peter himself exhorteth them to be all of one mind 1 Pet. 3. 8. but never to be all united in him as their head The Apostle Paul is punctual in describing the Officers of the Church and the peoples duty to them But he never describeth a Pope or any earthly Head of that Church nor ever telleth the people of their duty to such And if such a supposed fundamental should be quite forgotten by men that belieived it and taught others that which was necessary to be believed it were incredibly strange That Paul writing to the Romans should never mind them of the honour of their Sea or their duty to their supereminent Prelate was his forgetfulness or unbelief And surely he would never have so sharply reproved them of Corinth for contentions in saying I am of Paul and I of Apollo and I of Cephas and I of Christ if he had thought they must have been united in Cephas without once telling them of such a means of union and reconciliation He saith Is Christ divided as much as to say you must be all united in him but he saith not Is Cephas divided but plainly makes the exalters of Cephas a party that was guilty of division and Chap. 3. 3 4 5. tells them plainly that this shewed that they were carnal And speaking of all others in his own person and Apollos saith Who then is Paul or who is Apollo but Ministers by whom ye believed They had not then learned to answer Why Cephas is the Head of the Church And 1 Cor. 46. He speaks as if it were purposely to a Papist All these things brethren I have in a figure transferred to my self and to Apollo for your sakes that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written that no one of you be puffed up for one against another What not for Peter no not for Peter himself And doubtless Paul did not believe his supremacy when he so presumed to reprove him to his face Gal. 2. So 1 Cor. 10. 16 17. there is mention of our being all one bread and one body but that 's because we are all partakers of that one body of Christ and not because we are united in the Pope or any other Moreover when the Disciples strove who should be greatest Christ expresly rebuketh such thoughts and instead of granting any of them that desire he denyeth it to them all Mat. 22. 25 26. Luke 22. 26. The Kings of the Gentiles rule over them and are called gracious Lords but with you it shall not be so Bellarmine indeed can merrily hence gather that there must be one appointed to be the greatest because Christ saith He that will be Greatest let him be the servant of all This is to make good their charge against the Scripture that it is a nose of Wax by their presumptuons abuse of it as some men would prove the Apostacy of the Saints by their own Apostatizing when yet they prove it not though they ruine themselves Did not Christ by these words reprehend their seeking of a Supremacy And yet doth he grant it Oh but it is only Tyranny that Christ forbiddeth them Answ That which Christ acknowledgeth in the Kings of the Nations without reprehension that is it which he denyeth to his Disciples But it is not Tyranny but Dominion which Christ thus acknowledgeth in and alloweth to the Kings of the Nations therefore it is not Tyranny but Dominion which he forbiddeth to his Disciples That which Christ here speaketh of the Kings of the Nations is somewhat common to all Kings and so as Kings But Tyranny was not common to all Kings nor to them as Kings therefore it is not Tyranny that he speaks of Moreover its plain that it is a Greatness in Desire and Affectation that is the subject of Christs speech and not an allowed supremacy and that he forbids this Supremacy in the following words Let him be the servant of all q. d. I allow in my Kingdom to the Preachers of the Gospel no other Greatness or superiority above others but what consisteth in holiness and humility and doing good and so in disclaiming of Ruling Greatness In Luke 9. there 's mention of him that was least c. It follows not thence that one was appointed to be the lowest And if the will of Christ were known to them that one should be the Supream and this was Peter what need they strive any further about it or why doth he not rebuke them for resisting their Supream Again I say that I cannot see how it can stand with the wisdom or goodness of Christ the Law-giver of his Church or the perfection of his Laws or how it can be any way probable that he should be wholly silent of so great a point as the Headship and Center of the Churches Unity never giving us either the Name or Titles of such a Head nor the seat of his Empire nor appointing him his work nor directing him how to do it when he hath the greatest work in the world to do as these men suppose and such as surpasseth the strength of man yea of a thousand men never giving him any advice and direction for the determining of his very many occurrent difficulties nor once giving us any of his power nor telling us of his prerogative nor telling us what officers he shall appoint under him and how nor once telling any man of his duty to obey him never telling us any thing of the succession of this Soveraign in whom it shall reside nor once telling us historically of the exercise of
must be done to reduce them into Practice 1. THE first General Ground is this Peace and Holiness must be carried on together Yea Peace must be sought as a Means to Holiness and therefore Holiness which is the End must be preferred The wisdom that is from above is first Pure then Peaceable Gentle easie to be intreated c. Jam. 3. A man may be saved that cannot attain Peace with men and therefore we are commanded to seek it as an uncertain good Rom. 12. 18. If it be possible as much as in you lyeth live peacably with all men But no man can be saved without Holiness Heb. 12. 14. Follow Peace with all men and Holiness without which no man shall see God There is a kind of Unity among Devils For if Satan were divided against Satan how could his Kingdom stand Mat. 12. There is a Peace in a state of misery and sin which hindereth mens recovery For when the strong man armed keeps his house the things that he possesseth are in Peace It is a state of greatest danger on earth to be United in evil and to have Peace in a way of sin And therefore it is no wonder if there be more lovers of Peace then of Holiness and more that will cry out of our Divisions then of our ungodliness and more that cry out of so many Religions then of irreligiousness and ungodliness For nature may make a man in love with Unity and Peace but not with Holiness for with that it is at Enmity Hence it is that we hear so many Worldlings Swearers Drunkards Whoremongers cry up unity and cry down so many minds and wayes And hence it is that so many such wicked livers do turn Papists on supposition that there is more unity with them And so the Popish party among us are the sink into which the filth and excrements of our Churches are emptyed 2. The second General Ground From hence it followeth that the first closure of the members of the Church must be upon principles of Faith and Holiness and therefore only between the Professors of Faith and Holiness And therefore we ought not to be solicitous of obtaining a Unity with open ungodly men For what Communion hath light with darkness or what concord hath Christ with Belial If men will not agree with us in the great Principles of Godliness nor join with us in avoiding crying sins and living an Holy life it is they that are the Separatists and withdraw from our communion If they will not come to us in Piety we must not come to them in Impiety And to attempt a union with them in Government and Ceremonies when we cannot bring them to a Union with us in seeming Godliness is as vain as to attempt to an Association with the dead and to make a marriage with a stinking Corps It is therefore but a carnal stir that Papists and some Reconcilers make to have a Union so General as shall take in the most impious rabble that ought to be excommunicated and should conjoin the living and the dead And therefore in some cases we are all called to separate by him that calleth us in other cases to unity And he tels us that he came not to send peace with such but division 3. The third General Ground Unity and Peace are such excellent things and so much depend upon Love and Holiness and suppose also so much Illumination that the perfection of them is reserved for Heaven and as it is but a small measure of Illumination and Love and Holiness that is here attainable in comparison of that which we shall have in heaven so it is but a small measure of Peace and Concord And therefore though our desires and endeavours should go as high as we can yet our expectations on earth must not fly too high This hath been my own error I have not sufficiently considered that perfect Peace as well as perfect Holiness is the prerogative of Heaven and that true Peace will be imperfect while the Light and Vertue which is supposed to it is imperfect And it is a blind absurd conceit of them that wonder we have not perfect Unity when yet they murmur at Piety and think a little may serve the turn and any sin is tolerable that 's directly against God but not disunion So much for the General Grounds The Particular Grounds are these following 1. Ground IT is the Prerogative of the Lord Jesus to be the only Head and Soveraign of the Church And his will revealed is our Law and in him only must we center and not in any Vicarious Universal Head And from him must all receive their power and all must worship God according to his praescript Eph. 4. 3 4 5. 1. 21 22. Mat. 28. 18 19. Col. 1. 18. Acts 4. 12. 3. 22. 7. 37. Mat. 3. 17. 1 Cor. 3. 5 22. 1 Cor. 1. 12. Gal. 2. 9 10. 2. Gr. The Holy Scriptures with the Law of Nature are the only Laws of Christ unless as he may possibly by extraordinary Revelation oblige some person to a particular duty not contrary to that word but left undetermined which yet is so rare a thing that men must not rashly presume of such a matter 1 Tim. 1. 3. Gal. 1. 7 8. 9. Isa 8. 20. 1 Cor. 4. 6. 2 Tim. 3. 17. Deut. 12. 32. Mat. 15. 9 11. 3. It is the prerogative of Christ himself to be the supream absolute and final Judge of the sence of his own Laws and of the causes that are to be tried thereby And therefore it is treasonable folly to attribute any of this to man and to cry out for an Absolute Judge of Controversies here on earth when one saith This is the sence of Scripture and another saith that is the sence saith the Papist But who shall be Judge To which I answer How far man is Judge I shall tell you in the next but the Absolute Judge and the final Judge is only Christ He that made the Law is the proper Judge of the sence of his own Laws Do you not know that Christ will come to judgement and that all secrets must then be opened by him and he must decide what man cannot Man is to Judge but in tantum ad hoc secundum quid limitedly so far as he must execute but Christ only Judgeth entirely finally and absolutely 2 Cor. 4. 3 4 5. 1 Tim. 5. 24. Jam. 4. 11 12. 1 Pet. 1. 17. 2. 23. 1 Cor. 2. 15. Act. 23. 3. 1 Cor. 13. 9 10 11 12. Mark 7. 9 13. 4. All Councils whether General or Provincial or Classical which consist of the Bishops or Pastors of several Churches met together are appointed and to be used directly but gratiâ Unitatis Communionis Christianae and not directly gratia regiminis for the Governing of Pastors in order to Unity and Communion and not as a Regimental as to the Pastors This Proposition which is of exceeding consequence was voluntarily asserted to me
without my own asking his opinion by that Learned Judicious man Arch-Bishop Usher a man well known to be acquainted with the Judgement and practice of the Antients if any other whoever His words were these Councils are not for Government but for Unity not as being in order of Government over the several Bishops but that by consultation they may know their duty more clearly and by agreement maintain Unity and to this end they were anciently celebrated Himself a Primate recommended to others these moderate Principles And this middle way of Reverend Usher is the true healing Mean between them that would have properly Governing Councils and them that would have none or think them needless or but indifferent things But yet as is before mentioned in the tenth Proposition consequentially we are obliged to perform the Agreements of these Councils if they be agreeable to the General Rules of the Scriptures or if our performance be not forbidden by the Word of God Because we are under the General obligation to do all things in as much unity concord and peace as we can Gal. 2. per totum 1 Cor. 3. 5 22. 2 Cor. 13. 11. 1 Cor. 1. 10. 4. 6. Mat. 20. 25. Phil. 3. 16. 4. 2. Mat. 23. 8 9 10. 1 Pet. 5. 3. And I grant that Pastors are related to the Universal Church as well as to a particular and are to have a common care of the whole though they have a special charge only of their particular flocks Therefore many Pastors in a Synod are Pastors as well as disjunct and therefore their acts are authoritative Governing Acts as to the flock But 1. to the Pastors themselves they are not properly Governors no more in Synods then out 2. And as to the flocks they are not in a direct superiour order above their particular Pastors but only from their concord are accidentally more to be regarded and obeyed then a single Pastor as a Colledge of Physitians is more to be regarded then a single Physitian not as being of higher authority but of greater credit in cases where men must be trusted 5. A Council consisting of Bishops or Pastors that by distance are not uncapable of ordinary local Communion whether it be a General Council as they are commonly called which are not such properly or National or Provincial 1. As they are Christians singly have a Judgement of Discerning what is sound Doctrine and whom to judge Catholicks and fit for their Communion And 2. As they are single Pastors they have the Judgement of Direction what Doctrine to recommend as found to their people limited to the Superiour Direction of God by his Word and whom they must hold or not hold Communion with And this is an Authoritative Direction which may be accompanyed with a Commanding as an Herald or Pursevant may command in the Princes name 3. And as they are many Pastors in Council assembled they have a Judgement of Concord or Power to enter solemnly into Consultations for mutual information and then into Agreements for the right performance of their duty in recommending that which is sound Doctrine to their people and receiving the true members of the Catholick Church and rejecting such as are to be rejected So that the most General Councils of true Pastors caeteris paribus are to be most reverenced by the Princes and people and in cases where they are sure it is lawful to follow their Agreements though they be not satisfied of the necessity of it à natura rei they ought to follow them on the account of unity and also in cases meerly doubtful to them in point of Doctrine to be ballanced by their judgements rather then by the Judgement of single Pastors and more then by any other humane judgement caeteris paribus which exception I add because a smaller Assembly yea a single Pastor or private man speaking according to the Word of God is to be believed and regarded more then the greatest Assembly contradicting the Word yet we are not easily to think without evident proof that one man should be rather in the right then so many seeing it is easier for one to err then so many and the promises are more to the publick then any single persons so far as they can be known to others And yet an Assembly of an hundred or twenty or ten apparent humble holy Judicious men is likelier to be in the right and more to be regarded then an Assembly of a thousand ignorant unlearned wicked Bishops One clear eye may see further then ten thousand purblind ones Act. 6. 5. Act. 5. 34. 1 Thes 2. 14. 1 Cor. 11. 16. 14. 33. 10. 32. 6. As the properest matter for such General Assemblies to Consult and Agree upon is General things as What Doctrine is sound and what unsound in General what persons in General fit for the Churches Communion and what unfit c. so smaller Assemblies that are capable of ordinary personal Communion and know the persons and circumstances of the cases are fittest to consult and agree whether such or such particular persons are fit for their own Communion yea and for their Churches Communion in difficult cases And also may consult and agree what Doctrines and practises to recommend to their own people as most agreeable to the Word of God And thus far these two sorts of Synods may be said to have a power of Judging viz. ad hoc in order to such agreements and practice Act. 6. 5 6. Rom. 15. 26 27. 2. Cor 8. 19. 7. The Postors of particular Worshipping Churches are the Authorized Guides Rulers or Teachers of those Churches and each Member thereof and must first discern in their own minds and next if they be many over a Church Agree among themselves and then teach the people what is to be believed and practised and with whom in General and in Particular to hold Communion and whom to avoid and may charge the people in Christs name to obey their just directions and when they have done must themselves execute their own part herein as by avoiding the Rejected and not delivering them the Symbols or Sacrament of Communion c. And though they must consult with neighbor Churches for carrying on the work of God in unity and to the best advantage of the Common cause yet are they not under the proper Government of them or any Assemblies Ecclesiastical though obliged in all just things to Agree with them So that Canons as Canons I mean the Conclusions of such Assemblies are but properly Agreements and not Laws though by consequence they may be said to oblige or rather we by another Law obliged to accord and practise them Heb. 13. 17. 1 Thes 5. 12 13. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. Act. 20. 28. 8. The work of Councils how large so ever is not to make new Scriptures to be the Rule of our Faith and Life nor to make new Articles or Doctrines of Faith nor to frame God a new Worship in whole
division nor discontent Lay the Churches peace upon no new humane Impositions if you would have it hold Peruse Rom. 14. and the other Text last cited 1 Cor. 6. 12. 11. The Churches Peace or Unity must not be laid on any bare words of mans devising It 's not a work for Councils or Prelates to form the Christian doctrine in new methods and terms and then to force others to subscribe or use those very terms If the same men that refuse this be willing to subscribe to the whole Scripture or to a Confession in Scripture terms you may force him to no more Object But Hereticks will subscribe to Scripture Answ 1. They must wrest it then or wrest their Consciences And by either or both these shifts they may also subscribe to any of your Confessions 2. If his Heresie be latent in his mind you know it not nor can call him an Heretick nor doth it hurt the Church If it he published or preached to others let civil Governors question him for corporal punishment and let the Associate Pastors question him to his Reformation or Rejection You will have a better ground to reject him for delivering falsehood in his own words then for not subscribing to Truth in your words when he subscribed the same Truth in Gods Words There is no Unity to be expected if you will so far depart from the Scripture sufficiency as to make any more for sense or phrase of absolute necessity to our peace By phrase or terms I mean either the same numerically as in the Original or equipollent as in translations And I say not that it 's necessary to the unity of the Church that every word in Scripture Original or Translations be subscribed to for some may doubt of the corruption of a word or Book But that no more is necessary If all Scripture be not of that degree of Necessity much less humane additions Isa 8. 20. 1 Tim. 3. 17. 2 Tim. 1. 13. 1 Cor. 9. 5. 1 Tim. 6. 20. Act. 20. 32. 12. The Churches Unity Peace must not be laid upon all Divine Truths as not on lesser darker points which neither the being nor well-being of Christianity is concerned in so much as to rest upon them Phil. 3. 15 16. Rom. 14. 15 17 20. Heb. 5. 11 12 13 14. 1 Cor. 7. 19. Gal. 5. 6. 6. 15. Col. 3. 11. 13. We ought to love and esteem as Christians and members of the Catholick Church all those that profess to believe the Essentials of Christianity and to be sanctified by the Spirit of God and lead a holy upright life so they make a credible profession not evidently contradicted by words or deeds though these persons may differ from us in many lower points of Doctrine Worship or Government 1 Cor. 1. 2. Eph. 6. 24. Gal. 6. 15 16. Phil. 3. 16. Rom. 15. 1 2. 14. 1 2. 1 Cor. 8. 9. 14. We ought so to manage the Worship of God in our particular solemn Assemblies that no sober peaceable Christian may be repulsed or forced from our local Communion through differences in things of indifferent nature Heb. 8. 5. Mat. 15. 9. Rom. 14. 13. 14 1. 2 Cor. 11. 3. Joh. 4. 23 24. 15. If any Churches differ from us in Ceremonies or smaller things or if any particular Christians differ so that they cannot in conscience hold local Communion with us in the same Assemblies for Worship E. G. if we sit at the Lords Supper and they dare not take it without kneeling if we sing a version of the Psalms which they scrup'e to joyn in If we permit none to joyn that will not conform in disputable things in such cases though it be first our duty to do our best to remove all offences yet if that cannot be done we may and ought in several Assemblies to take each other for Brethren and of the same Catholick Church so be it we all hold the same essentials of Faith and Godliness and walk accordingly and especially if we also hold those weighty superstructures that the welfare of the Church is most concerned in Though here were few or no instances of this case in the days of the Apostles when divisions were not so great as now yet the general rules in the fore-cited Texts do prove it 16. Ecclesiastical Ministerial Government by whomsoever exercised must not degenerate into a secular coercive Government nor may we use carnal weapons nor meddle by force with mens bodies or estates nor yet can we oblige the Magistrate to do it meerly to execute our censures or without sufficient Evidence to prove it his duty nor can we oblige the people against the Word of God clave errante so that neither Bishop nor Council hath any such power as is properly decisively Judicial obliging to execution be the sentence right or wrong But our people must know that though we be their Guides or Rulers yet are we but Ministers and that they have a higher power to regard and must not obey us against the Lord but in and for him The Power of Pastors therefore is not like Magistrates or absolute Judges as is said before but like a Physitian in his Hospital or in an infected City among his Patients and like a Reader of any Science to voluntary Scholars in his School and as an Embassador to them to whom he is sent So that our Governing being but by the Word and on the Conscience is of the same nature with our Directing 1 Pet. 5. 3. Luke 22. 25 26. 3 Joh. 9. 10. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. 17. Magistrates are Governors of the Church even as a Church and of Christians as Christians though not Absolutely nor in the same respects by the same means to the same neerest Ends as Pastors Magistrates must force us to our duty and punish us if we be wicked or negligent even as Pastors and cast us out of our Benefices and deny us encouragements if we be insufficient so that ad hoc the Magistrate is the only Judge what is sound doctrine and what heresie what Ministers are sufficient or insufficient culpable or not I say ad hoc so far as to Judge who shall have publick Liberty and Countenance and who shall be punished restrained and discountenanced Thus far the Mastrate is Judge in Religion besides that Judgement of Choice which every private man hath And therefore the Princes of the Christian world should hold some correspondencies like General Councils among themselves by their agents for carrying on the work of Christ and much of the unity and prosperity of Christians lyeth on their hands Isa 49. 23. Psal 2. 12. Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4. 1 King 2. 27 35. 2 King 18. 4. 2 King 23. 8 20. 2 Chron. 14. 3 5. Josh 1. 8. 1 Tim. 2. 2. 18. Yet are the Pastors of the Church in their places Rulers or Guides of Princes and Magistrates that is we Guide them by Doctrine and Church discipline as they Rule us
in Scripture be a member of some particular Church where he may worship God in the Communion of Saints 3. Let those that make not the foresaid Christian Profession be excluded the number of Christians and those that own not the Fundamentals of communion the Church Ministry Word Prayer Praise Sacrament of Communion be taken as unmeet for actual communion with us though yet we censure them not to be no Christians 4. Let those that are obstinate and impenitent in any Errors contrary to the said Profession and Ordinances or in actual gross sin or discovering an ungodly heart be rejected by the Church after due admonition and patience 5 Let all the Pastors Associate and hold constant correspondency according to their neerness and opportunity for helping and strengthening each other and unanimous carrying on the work of Christ 6. Let these Associations have standing Presidents where the peace of the Church requireth it 7 Let no particular Pastors set up any thing in Gods publick Worship which is not Necessary and may tend to make divisions by driving tender Consciences from his communion 8. Let Associations forbear making Laws to others and imposing as Governours and let them make Agreements for certain Duty and not Laws that pretend to make new duties and let them Agree on nothing unnecessary 9. Let them study Holiness as much as Peace and keep clean themselves and their societies as far as they can and look at labour and suffering and not at any other honour and power but what is for duty and let them look abroad and help the dark parts within their reach and lay out themselves freely and industriously for God and have the chief regard to the most publick good 10. Let him that is justly cast out of one Church be received by none into communion till he be reconciled and if they suspect that he is unjustly cast out let him not be received till the Church that cast him out be heard and the injury or his Repentance manifest 11. Let those that cannot hold local communion because of some smaller practical difference as gestures words c. and yet agree in the foresaid Profession and Fundamentals of Communion yet own each other professedly as Brethren and maintain Love and communion in other respects 12. Let all differing Christians consult and agree how to hold their differences so as may least prejudice the common truths which all receive and as may least hinder the salvation of the ungodly or offend the weak 13. Let none judge or defame each other till they are heard and see they have sufficient cause by certain proof And then admonish them and bring the cause to the Association before they proceed further 14. Let the correspondency of Pastors extend as far as there is Capacity Opportunity and need We cannot correspond with the Antipodes nor much with the Ethiopians nor such remote parts there is seldom opportunity and seldom necessity of actual correspondence with forreign Nations But yet when publick occasions require it the publickest cases being the weightiest we should by Delegates or Messengers from several Associations perform our duties in all such correspondencies whether in Councils or otherwise 15. If any members of our Churches travail into other parts they should take Certificates or Communicatory Letters that they may be admitted to the communion of the Churches where they travail or abide 16. The chief consultations for General Peace and effectual promoting the healing of the Churches and the propagation of the Gospel into the unbelieving parts of the world should be done by Christian Princes by their Agents and though Ministers are fit to be partly their Agents in such consultations yet not meerly as Pastors but as fit men employed by their Princes He that lives to see but this much reduced to practise will see a better unity and peace in the Church then ever was or will be attained by an earthly Head and Judge of the Universal Church whether Pope or Council or then the Agreement of the five Patriarks and the later Primates and Metropolitans will procure Let us be content with one Head and one Heart and center there but though the fingers and toes be more we can well bear it Take up with the Holy Scriptures as the sufficient Rule Let the Profession of that be the mark of a believer and all such believers be taken to be as they are the Catholick Church and no faction Schismatically and presumptuously confine it to themselves Let this Intellectual Unity of faith be seconded with a cordial Unity of Holy Love to Christ and his Members that so our Unity may begin at the Head and Heart and not perversly at the fingers and toes of smaller matters or at the hair and nails of Ceremonies and indifferent Modes Let this be manifested in Professions of Love and publick ownings of the Catholick Brotherhood and of Christians as Christians and by publick disclaiming all selfishness and partiality and private Interests and all reproachfull words and writings and by actual communion as far as we can Let the Worship of God be performed in such holy simplicity that none may be driven from the sacred Assemblies and let the people be suffered to go the same way to heaven as Peter and Paul did go themselves and lead their hearers in Let us not be ambitious of Church Union or Communion with those that ought to be cast out of the Church and whom we are in Scripture commanded to avoid but let the three attributes of Holy Catholick and Apostolical be still affixed to the Church and be practically considered and those considerations issued in The Communion of Saints And then we shall have so much Unity and Peace as may honour the Christian Religion and strengthen us in the way to our Perfect Peace which is not to be expected in this dark diseased imperfect world This is the way and none but this But is there any hope that while men are as they are such healing Truths should be received and obeyed Yes by here and there a man who shall have the Peace of their peaceable Affections and Endeavours but not by the most either of the people or the Pastors let the evidence of the truth be never so clear Who can expect any great success of such Proposals that knows the world till the time come when Light shall go forth with an absolute resolution to prevail God is one and all that Deny themselves and center in him must needs be One But self is as various and numerous as Persons are And this self is the Heart of the Natural man and the Center of all the unsanctified And every self is a grain of Sand that 's hardly made coherent with another The Darkest mind is self-conceited and the poorest child or beggar is self-affected and high and low Princes and people have self-interests which draw them several waves And in the sanctified this self is mortified but in part and is the first living and