the Learned among them that who will dispute against it must prepare himself to hear the censure of St. Austin Ep. 118. where he saith That it is a point of most insolent madness to dispute whether that be to be observed which is frequented by the whole Church through the world 4. He sayes The sincerity of Devotion is much obstructed by making the efficacy of Sacraments depend upon the bare administration whether our minds be prepared for them or not In what Council this Doctrine was defined I never read but as for the Sacrament of Penance which I suppose he chiefly aims at I read in the Council of Trent Sess. 14. Falso quidam calumniantur That some do falsly calumniate Catholick Writers as if they taught the Sacrament of Penance did confer Grace without the good motion of the receiver which the Church of God never taught nor thought But I am rather inclined to look upon this as a mistake than a calumny in the Objector 5. He sayes The sincerity of devotion is much obstructed by discouraging the reading of Scriptures which is our most certain Rule of Faith and Life Here he calls the Churches prudential dispensing the reading of Scripture to persons whom she judges fit and disposed for it and not to such whom she judges in a condition to receive or do harm by it a discouraging the reading of Scriptures which is no other than whereas St. Paul Coloss. 3. 21. enjoyns Fathers not to provoke their children lest they be discouraged one should reprove a Father for discouraging his child because he will not put a Knife or Sword into his hands when he foresees he will do mischief with it to himself or others the Scriptures in the hands of a meek and humble soul who submits its judgement in the interpretation of it to that of the Church is a Sword to defend it but in the hands of an arrogant and presumptuous Spirit that hath no Guide to interpret it but it s own fancy or passion it is a dangerous Weapon with which he will wound both himself and others The first that permitted promiscuous reading of Scripture in our Nation was King Henry the eighth and many years were not passed but he found the ill consequences of it for in a Book set forth by him in the year 1542. he complains in the Preface That he found entred into some of his peoples hearts an inclination to sinister understanding of it presumption arrogancy carnal liberty and contention which he compares to the seven worse Spirits in the Gospel with which the Devil entred into the house that was purged and cleansed Whereupon he declares that for that part of the Church ordained to be taught that is the Lay people it ought not to be denyed certainly that the reading of the Old and New Testament is not so necessary for all those folks that of duty they ought and be bound to read it but as the Prince and Policy of the Realm shall think convenient so to be tolerated or taken from it Consonant whereunto saith he the Politick Law of our Realm hath now restrained it from a great many This was the judgement of him who first took upon him the Title of Head of the Church of England and if that ought not to have been followed in after times let the dire effects of so many new Sects and Fanaticisms as have risen in England from the reading of it bear witness For as St. Austin sayes Neque enim natae sunt Haereses Heresies have no other Origen but hence that the Scriptures which in themselves are good are not well understood and what is understood amiss in them is rashly and boldly asserted viz. to be the sense of them And now whether the Scriptures left to the private interpretation of every fanciful spirit as it is among Protestants be a most certain Rule of Faith and Life I leave to your self to judge 6. He sayes The sincerity of devotion is much obstructed by the multitude of superstitious observations never used in the Primitive Church as he is ready to defend he should have said to prove for we deny any such to be used in the Church 7. By the gross abuse of people in Pardons and Indulgences Against this I can assert as an eye-witness the great devotion caused by the wholsome use of Indulgences in Catholick Countreys there being no Indulgence ordinarily granted but enjoyns him that will avail himself of it to confess his sins to receive the Sacraments to pray fast and give alms all which duties are with great devotion performed by Catholick people which without the incitement of an Indulgence had possibly been left undone 8. He sayes The sincerity of devotion is much obstructed by denying the Cup to the Laity contrary to the practice of the Church in the solemn celebration of the Eucharist for a thousand years after Christ. This thousand years after Christ makes a great noise as if it were not as much in the power of the Church a thousand years after Christ as well as in the first or second Century to alter and change things of their own nature indifferent such as the communicating under one or both kinds was ever held to be by Catholicks But although the Cup were not then denyed to the Laity yet that the custome of receiving but under one kind was permitted even in the primitive Church in private communions the objector seems to grant becasue he speaks only of the Administration of it in the solemn Celebration and that it was also in use in publick Communions is evident from Examples of that time both in the Greek Church in the time of St. Chrysostome and of the Latin in the time of St. Leo the great As for the pretended obstruction of Devotion you must know Catholicks believe that under either species or kind whole Christ true God and man is contained and received and if it be accounted an hindrance to devotion to receive the total refection of our soul though but under one kind what must it be to believe that I receive him under neither but instead of him have Elements of Bread and Wine Surely nothing can be more efficacious to stir up Reverence and Devotion in us than to believe that God himself will personally enter under our Roof The ninth Hinderance of the sincerity of devotion is that we make it in the power of a person to dispense in Oathes and Marriages contrary to the Law of God To this I answer That some kind of Oaths the condition of the person and other Circumstances considered may be Iudged to be hurtful and not fit to be kept and the dispensation in them is no more than to Iudge or determine them to be so and consequently to do this cannot be a hinderance but a furtherance to devotion nor is it contrary to the Law of God which commands nothing that 's hurtful to be done As for Marriages we acknowledge the Church may dispense in
it or gave any signs of contrition it ought not to be omitted alwayes provided that those who are mad do nothing against the reverence of the Sacrament That being secured their work is done and if any sins have remained upon them they are taken off by vertue of this sacred Vnction and being thus anointed like the Athletae of old they are prepared to wrestle with all the powers of the Air who can then fasten no hold upon them Yet to be just to them the Roman Ritual saith that impenitent persons and those who dye in mortal sin and excommunicate and unbaptized are to be denyed extream Vnction A hard case for those who dye in mortal sin for if they could but express any sign of contrition by the motion of an Eye or a Finger all were well enough And for the impenitent we are not to imagine them so cruel to account any so but such who refuse the Sacrament of Pennance the summ of it then is if a man when he is like to live and therefore to sin no longer doth but probably express some signs of contrition and doth not refuse the Sacrament of Pennance if time and the condition of the Patient permit the using it then he is to have grace conferred on him by this last Sacrament which he is sure to receive although he be no more sensible what they are doing about him than if he were dead already So that upon the whole matter I begin to wonder how any sort of men in the Church of Rome can be afraid of falling so low as Purgatory I had thought so much Grace as is given them by every Sacrament where there are so many and some of them so often used might have served to carry one to Heaven they receive a stock of Grace in Baptism before they could think of it if they lose any in Childhood that is supplyed again by the Sacrament of Chrisme or Confirmation if they fall into actual sins and so lose it it is but confessing to the Priest and receiving absolution and they are set up again with a new stock and it is a hard case if that be not increased by frequent Masses at every one of which he receives more and although Priests want the comfortable Grace that is to be received by the Sacrament of Matrimony yet they may easily make it up by the number of Masses and to make all sure at last the extream Vnction very sweetly conveyes Grace into them whether they be sensible or not But all this while what becomes of Purgatory That is like to be left very desolate if the interest of that opinion were not greater than the evidence for the Sacraments conferring grace ex opere operato Let them seek to reconcile them if they can it is sufficient for our purpose that both of them tend to destroy the sincerity of devotion and the necessity of a good life § 8. 3. I said the sincerity of devotion is much obstructed by discouraging tdiscourahe reading of the Scriptures which is our most certain Rule of faith and life To this he answers two wayes 1. That their Churches prudential dispensing the reading the Scriptures to persons whom she judges fit and disposed for it and not to such whom she judges in a condition to receive or do harm by it is no discouraging the reading of them any more than a Father may be said to discourage his Child because he will not put a Knife or a Sword into his hands when he foresees he will do mischief with it to himself or others and the Scriptures he saith are no other in the hands of one who doth not submit his judgement in the interpretation of it to that of the Church the doing of which he makes the character of a meek and humble soul and the contrary of an arrogant and presumptuous spirit 2. That the ill consequences of permitting the promiscuous reading of Scripture were complained of by Henry the eighth who was the first that gave way to it and if his judgement ought not to be followed in after times let the dire effects of so many Sects and Fanaticisms as have risen in England from the reading of it bear witness For all Heresies arise saith St. Austin from misunderstanding the Scriptures and therefore the Scripture being left as among Protestants to the private interpretation of every fanciful Spirit cannot be a most certain rule of faith and life In which answer are three things to be discussed 1. Whether that prudential dispensing the Scriptures as he calls it be any hinderance to devotion or no 2. Whether the reading of the Scriptures be the cause of the numbers of Sects and Fanaticisms which have been in England 3. Whether our opinion concerning the reading and interpreting Scripture doth hinder it from being a most certain rule of faith and life 1. Whether that prudential dispensing the Scriptures used in the Church of Rome doth hinder devotion or no This prudential dispensing I suppose he means the allowing no persons to read the Scriptures in their own tongue without licence under the hand of the Bishop or Inquisitor by the advice of the Priest or Confessor concerning the persons fitness for it and whosoever presumes to do otherwise is to be denyed absolution For this is the express Command in the fourth Rule of the Index published by order of the Council of Trent and set forth by the authority of Pius the fourth and since by Clement the eighth and now lately inlarged by Alexander the seventh And whether this tends to the promoting or discouraging the sincerity of devotion will appear by considering these things 1. That it is agreed on both sides that the Scriptures do contain in them the unquestionable Will of that God whom we are bound to serve And it being the end of devotion as it ought to be of our lives to serve him what is there the mind of any one who sincerely desires to do it can be more inquisitive after or satisfied in than the rules God himself hath given for his own service Because it is so easie a matter for men to mistake in the wayes they choose to serve him in I see the world divided more scarce about any thing than this Some think God ought to be worshipped by offering up Sacrifices to him of those things we receive from his bounty Others that we ought to offer up none to him now but our selves in a holy life and actions Some that God is pleased by abstaining from flesh or any living creature and others that he is much better pleased with eating Fish than Flesh and that a full meal of one is at some times mortification and fasting and eating temperately of the other is luxury and irreligion Some think no sight more pleasing to God than to see men lash and whip themselves for their sins till the blood comes others that he is as well pleased at least with hearty repentance and sincere
by the terms of communion with that Church be guilty either of Hypocrisie or Idolatry either of which are sins inconsistent with salvation Which I thus prove That Church which requires the giving the Creature the Worship due only to the Creator makes the members of it guilty of hypocrisie or Idolatry for it they do it they are guilty of the latter if they do it not of the former but the Church of Rome in the Worship of God by Images the Adoration of the Bread in the Eucharist and the formal Invocation of Saints doth require the giving to the creature the Worship due only to the Creator therefore it makes the members of it guilty of hypocrisie or Idolatry That the Church of Rome in these particulars doth require the giving the creature the honour due only to God I prove thus concerning each of them 1. Where the Worship of God is terminated upon a creature there by their own confession the Worship due only to God is given to the creature but in the Worship of God by Images the Worship due to God is terminated wholly on the creature which is thus proved the Worship which God himself denyes to receive must be terminated on the creature but God himself in the second Commandment not only denyes to receive it but threatens severely to punish them that give it Therefore it cannot be terminated on God but only on the Image 2. The same argument which would make the grossest Heathen Idolatry lawful cannot excuse any act from Idolatry but the same argument whereby the Papists make the Worship of the Bread in the Eucharist not to be Idolatry would make the grossest Heathen Idolatry not to be so For if it be not therefore Idolatry because they suppose the bread to be God then the Worship of the Sun was not Idolatry by them who supposed the Sun to be God and upon this ground the grosser the Idolatry was the less it was Idolatry for the grossest Idolaters were those who supposed their Statues to be Gods And upon this ground their Worship was more lawful than of those who supposed them not to be so 3. If the supposition of a middle excellency between God and us be a sufficient ground for formal Invocation then the Heathen Worship of their inferiour Deities could be no Idolatry for the Heathens still pretended that they did not give to them the Worship proper to the Supream God which is as much as is pretended by the devoutest Papist in justification of the Invocation of Saints To these I expect a direct and punctual answer professing as much Charity towards them as is consistent with Scripture and Reason 2. Because the Church of Rome is guilty of so great corruption of the Christian Religion by such opinions and practices which are very apt to hinder a good life Such are the destroying the necessity of a good life by making the Sacrament of Penance joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation the taking off the care of it by supposing an expiation of sin by the prayers of the living after death and the sincerity of devotion is much obstructed in it by prayers in a language which many understand not by making the efficacy of Sacraments depend upon the bare administration whether our minds be prepared for them or not by discouraging the reading the Scripture which is our most certain rule of faith and life by the multitude of superstitious observations never used in the Primitive Church as we are ready to defend by the gross abuse of people in Pardons and Indulgences by denying the Cup to the Laity contrary to the practice of the Church in the solemn Celebration of the Eucharist for a thousand years after Christ by making it in the power of any person to dispense contrary to the Law of God in Oathes and Marriages by making disobedience to the Church in disputable matters more hainous than disobedience to the Laws of Christ in unquestionable things as Marriage in a Priest to be a greater crime than Fornication By all which practices and opinions we assert that there are so many hinderances to a good life that none who have a care of their salvation can venture their souls in the communion of such a Church which either enjoyns or publickly allows them 3. Because it exposeth the faith of Christians to so great uncertainty By making the authority of the Scriptures to depend on the infallibility of the Church when the Churches Infallibility must be proved by the Scripture by making those things necessary to be believed which if they be believed overthrow all foundations of faith viz. That we are not to believe our senses in the plainest objects of them as that bread which we see is not bread upon which it follows that tradition being a continued kind of sensation can be no more certain than sense it self and that the Apostles might have been deceived in the body of Christ after the resurrection and the Church of any Age in what they saw or heard By denying to men the use of their judgement and reason as to the matters of faith proposed by a Church when they must use it in the choice of a Church by making the Churches power extend to make new Articles of faith viz. by making those things necessary to be believed which were not so before By pretending to infallibility in determining Controversies and yet not determining Controversies which are on foot among themselves All which and several other things which my designed brevity will not permit me to mention tend very much to shake the faith of such who have nothing else to rely on but the authority of the Church of Rome 3. I answer That a Protestant leaving the Communion of our Church doth incurr a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the communion of the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible ignorance and therefore cannot equally be saved with such a one For a Protestant is supposed to have sufficient convictions of the Errors of the Roman Church or is guilty of wilful ignorance if he hath not but although we know not what allowances God will make for invincible ignorance we are sure that wilful ignorance or choosing a worse Church before a better is a damnable sin and unrepented of destroyes salvation To the second Question I answer 1. I do not understand what is meant by a Christian in the Abstract or in the whole latitude it being a thing I never heard or read of before and therefore may have some meaning in it which I cannot understand 2. But if the Question be as the last words imply it Whether a Christian by vertue of his being so be bound to joyn in some Church or Congregation of Christians I answer affirmatively and that he is bound to choose the communion of the purest Church and not to leave that for a corrupt one though called never so Catholick The Proposer of the Questions Reply to the Answer Madam I
Resurrection 3. He saith that We expose faith to great uncertainty by denying to men the use of their Judgement and Reason as to matters of faith proposed by a Church that is we deny particular mens Iudgement as to matters of faith to be as good if not better than the Churches and to inferre from henâ—e that we make Faith uncertain is just as if on the contrary one should say that Protestants make faith certain by exposing matter of faith determined by the Church to be discussed and reversed by the Iudgement and reason or rather fancy of every private man We have good store of this kind of certainty in England But as for the use of our Iudgement and Reason as to the matters themselves proposed by the Church it is the daily business of Divines and Preachers not only to shew them not to be repugnant to any natural truth but also to illustrate them with Arguments drawn from reason But the use he would have of reason is I suppose to believe nothing but what his reason can comprehend and this is not only irrational in its self but contrary to the Doctrine of St. Paul where he commands us to captivate our understandings to the Obedience of Faith 4. He adds We expose faith to uncertainty by making the Church power extend to making new Articles of Faith And this if it were true were something indeed to his purpose But the Church never yet owned any such power in her General Councils but only to manifest and establish the Doctrine received from her Fore-fathers as is to be seen in the prooems of all the Sessions of the Council of Trent where the Fathers before they declare what is to be believed ever premise that what they declare is the same they have received by Tradition from the Apostles And because it may happen that some particular Doctrine was not so plainly delivered to each part of the Church as it happened in St. Cyprians case concerning the non-rebaptization of Hereticks we acknowledge it is in her power to make that necessary to be believed which was not so before not by inventing new Articles but by declaring more explicitely the Truths contained in Scripture and Tradition Lastly he saith We expose Faith to great uncertainty because the Church pretending to infallibility does not determine Controversies on foot among our selves As if faith could not be certain unless all Controversies among particular men be determined what then becomes of the certainty of Protestants faith who could yet never find out a sufficient means to determine any one Controversie among them for if that means be plain Scripture what one Iudgeth plain another Iudgeth not so and they acknowledge no Iudge between them to decide the Controversie As for the Catholick Church if any Controversies arise concerning the Doctrine delivered as in St. Cyprians case she determines the Controversie by declaring what is of Faith And for other Controversies which belong not to faith she permits as St. Paul saith every one to abound in his own sence And thus much in Answer to his third Argument by which and what hath been said to his former Objections it appears that he hath not at all proved what he asserted in his second Answer to the first Question viz. That all those who are in the Communion of the Church of Rome do run so great a hazard of their Salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace or continue in it But he hath a third Answer for us in case the former faile and it is § 10. That a Protestant leaving the Communion of the Protestant Church doth incurr a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible ignorance This is the directest answer he gives to the Question and what it imports is this That invincible Ignorance and he doth not know what allowance God will make for that neither is the only Anchor which a Catholick hath to save himself by If by discoursing with Protestants and reading their Books he be not sufficiently convinced whereas he ought in the supposition of the Answerer to be so that the Letter of the Scripture as interpretable by every private mans reason is a most certain Rule of Faith and Life but is still over-ruled by his own Motives the same which held St. Austin in the bosome of the Catholick Church he is guilty of wilful Ignorance and consequently a lost man there is no hope of Salvation for him Much less for a Protestant who shall embrace the Catholick Communion because he is supposed doubtless from the same Rule to have sufficient conviction of the Errors of the Roman Church or is guilty of wilful Ignorance If he have it not which is a damnable sin and unrepented of destroyes salvation So that now the upshot of the Answer to the Question Whether a Protestant embracing Catholick Religion upon the same motives which one bred and well grounded in it hath to remain in it may be equally saved with him comes to this that they shall both be damned though unequally because the converted Catholick more deeply than he that was bred so And now who can but lament the sad condition of that great Doctor and Father of the Church and hitherto reputed St. Austin who rejecting the Manichees pretended rule of Scripture upon the aforesaid grounds left their Communion to embrace the Communion of the Church of Rome And what is become now of their distinction of points fundamental from not fundamental which heretofore they thought sufficient to secure both Catholicks and Protestants Salvation and to charge us with unconscionable uncharitableness in not allowing them to be sharers with us The absurdness of these consequences may serve for a sufficient conviction of the nullity of his third and last answer to the first Question As for what he saith to the second I agree so far with him that every Christian is bound to choose the Communion of the purest Church but which that Church is must be seen by the grounds it brings to prove the Doctrines it teaches to have been delivered by Christ and his Apostles That Church is to be judged purest which hath the best grounds and consequently it is of necessity to Salvation to embrace the communion of it What then you are bound to do in reason and conscience is to see which Religion of the two hath the strongest Motives for it and to embrace that as you will answer the contrary to God and your own soul. To help you to do this and that the Answerer may have the less exception against them I will give you a Catalogue of Catholick Motives though not all neither in the words of the forecited Dr. Taylor advertising only for brevity sake I leave out some mentioned by him and that in these I set down you also give allowance for some expressions of his with which he hath mis-represented them Thus then he Liberty of
was performed to the Martyrs for neither was any Sacrifice offered up to any of them nor any other part of religious worship for thereupon he shews which is very conveniently left out in the citation that not only Sacrifice was refused by Saints and Angels but any other religious honour which is due to God himself as the Angel forbad St. Iohn to fall down and worship him All the worship therefore he saith that they give to Saints is That of love and society and of the same kind which we give to holy men in this life who are ready to suffer for the truth of the Gospel But that the worship of Invocation is expresly excluded by St. Austin appears by what himself saith on a like occasion where he shews the difference between the Gentiles worship and theirs They saith he build Temples erect Altars appoint Priests and offer Sacrifices but we erect no Temples to Martyrs as to Gods but Memories as to dead men whose Spirits live with God we raise no Altars on which to sacrifice to Martyrs but to one God the God of Martyrs as well as ours at which as men of God who have overcome the world by confessing him they are named in their place and order but are not invocated by the Priest who sacrifices And elsewhere saith Whatever the Christians do at the memories of the Martyrs is for ornaments to those memories not as any sacred Rites or Sacrifices belonging to the dead as Gods we therefore do not worship our Martyrs with divine honours nor with the faults of men as the Gentiles did their Gods Which gave occasion to Lud. Vives in his Notes on that Chapter to say that many Christians in his time what sort of Catholicks those were it is easie to guess but to be sure none of St. Austins did no otherwise worship Saints than they did God himself neither could he see in many things any difference between the opinion they had of Saints and what the Gentiles had of their Gods I cannot understand then how St. Austins answer should justifie that which he condemns He denyes that there was an Invocation of Saints but only a commemoration of them the Church of Rome pleads for any Invocation of them and condemns all those who deny it So that his answer is very far from clearing the Roman Church in the practice of Invocation and the objection we make against it that it doth parallel the Heathen Idolatry for it grants it would do so if they gave to the Saints the worship due to God of which he makes Invocation to be a part But after all this can we imagine that he should practise himself contrary to his own doctrine Yes saith he he made a prayer to St. Cyprian let Blessed Cyprian therefore help us in our prayers But is there no difference to be made between such an Apostrophe to a person in ones writing and solemn supplication to him with all the soâ—emnity of devotion in the duties of Religious worship If I should now say Let St. Austin now help me in his prayers while I am defending his constant opinion that Invocation is proper to God alone would they take this for renouncing the Protestant doctrine and embracing that of the Church of Rome I doubt they would not think that I escaped the Anathema of the Council of Trent for all this The Question between us is not how far such wishes rather than prayers were thought allowable being uttered occasionally as St. Austin doth this to St. Cyprian but whether solemn Invocation of Saints in the duties of Religious worship as it is now practised in the Roman Church were ever practised in St. Austins time and this we utterly deny We do not say that they did not then believe that the Saints in Heaven did pray for them and that some of them did express their wishes that they would pray particularly for them we do not say that some superstitions did not creep in after the Anniversary meetings at the Sepulchres of the Martyrs grew in request for St. Austin himself saith that what they taught was one thing and what they did bear with was another speaking of the customes used at those solemnities But here we stand and fix our foot against all opposition whatsoever that there was no such doctrine or practice allowed in the Church at that time as is owned and approved at this day in the Church of Rome But from St. Austin we are sent to Calvin whose authority though never owned as infallible by us we need not fear in this point and I cannot but wonder if he saw the words in Calvin or Bellarmin that he would produce them For Calvin doth there say That the Council of Carthage did forbid praying to Saints lest the publick prayers should be corrupted by such kind of addresses Holy Peter pray for us If St. Austin were present in this Council as my Adversary saith he was I wonder what advantage it will be to him from Calvins saying that the Council did condemn and forbid those prayers which were in use by some of the people But it seems he takes the peoples part against the Council and St. Austin too and thinks it enough for them to follow the practices condemned by Councils and Fathers which we are sure they do and are glad to find so ingenuous a confession of it He may as well the next time bring St. Austins testimony for worshipping Martyrs and Images because he saith he knew many who adored Sepulchres and Pictures and for the worship of Angels because he saith he had heard of many who had tryed to go to God by praying to Angels and were thought worthy to fall into delusions § 16. But the strangest effort of all the rest is what he hath reserved to the last place viz. That the charge of Idolatry against them must be vain and groundless because if I be pressed close I shall deny any one of these Negative points to be divine truths viz. that honour is not to be given to the Images of Christ and his Saints that what appears to be bread in the Eucharist is not the body of Christ that it is not lawful to Invocate the Saints to pray for us But the answer to this is so easie that it will not require much time to dispatch it For I do assert it to be an Article of my faith That God alone is to be worshipped with divine and religious worship and he that cannot hence infer that no created Being is to be so worshipped hath the name of reasonable creature given him to no purpose What need we make Negative Articles of faith where the Affirmative do necessarily imply them If I believe that the Scripture is my only rule of faith as I most firmly do will any man that considers what he saith require me to make Negative Articles of faith that the Pope is not Tradition is not Councils are not a
and that he would defend what he had said to death His propositions were condemned by the Faculty and the Bishop of Paris upon which he appeals to the Pope and goes to Avignon to Clem. 7. where the whole Order of Dominicans appears for him and the Vniversity against him by their Deputies of whom Pet. de Alliaco was the chief The assertions which he was condemned for relating to this matter were these following as they are written in a Manuscript of Petr. de Alliaco from which they are published by the late author of the History of the Vniversity of Paris 1. To assert any thing to be true which is against Scripture is most expresly contrary to faith This is condemned as false and injurious to the Saints and Doctors 2. That all persons Christ only excepted have not derived Original sin from Adam is expresly against faith This is condemned as false scandalous presumptuous and offensive to pious ears Which he affirms particularly of the B. Virgin and is in the same terms condemned 3. It is as much against Scripture to exempt any one person from Original sin besides Christ as to exempt ten 4. It is more against Scripture that the B.V. was not conceived in Original sin than to say that she was both in Heaven and on Earth from the first Instant of her Conception or Sanctification 5. That no exception ought to be allowed in explication of Scripture but what the Scripture it self makes All which are condemned as the former Against these Censures he appeals to the Pope because therein the doctrine of St. Thomas which is approved by the Church is condemned and that it was only in the Popes power to determine any thing in these points Upon this the Vniversity publishes an Apologetical Epistle wherein they declare that they will rather suffer any thing than endure Heresie to spring up among them and vindicate their own authority in their Censures and earnestly beg the assistance of all the Bishops and Clergy in their cause and their care to suppress such dangerous doctrines this was dated Febr. 14. A. D. 1387. But being cited to Avignon thither they send the Deputies of the Vniversity where this cause was debated with great zeal and earnestness about a years time and at last the Vniversities Censure was confirmed and Ioh. de Montesono fled privately into Spain But the Dominicans did not for all this give over Preaching the same doctrine upon which a grievous perfecution was raised against them as appears not only by the testimony of Walsingham but of the continuer of Martinus Polonus who saith that insurrection were every where made against them and many of them were imprisoned and the people denyed them Alms and Oblations and they were forbidden to Preach or read Lectures or bear Confessions in so much that they were made he saith the scorn and contempt of the people and this storm lasted many years and there was none to help them because their enemies believed in persecuting them they did honour to the B. Virgin Nay the Kings Confessour the Bishop of Eureux was forced to recant for holding with the Dominicans and to declare that their opinions were false and against faith and they made him upon his knees beg the King that he would write to the King of Arragon and the Pope that they would cause Ioh. de Montesono to be sent prisoner to Paris there to receive condigne punishment The next year A. D. 1389. they made Adam de Soissons Prior of a Dominican Convent publickly recant the same Doctrine before the Vniversity and Stephen Gontier was sent Prisoner to Paris by the Bishop of Auxerre as suspected of Heresie because he joyned with his Brethren in the appeal to the Pope and another called Iohannes Ade was forced to recant four times for saying that he favoured the opinions of Ioh. de Montesono But these troubles were not confined only to France for not long after A. D. 1394. Iohn King of Arragon published a Proclamation that no one under pain of Banishment should Preach or Dispute against the immaculate Conception and in Valenciâ— one Moses Monerus was banished by Ferdinand on that account because the tumults could not be appeased without it Lucas Waddingus in his History of the Embassy about the immaculate Conception gives a short account of the Scandals that have happened by the tumults which have risen in Spain and elsewhere on this Controversie which he dares not relate at large he saith because of the greatness of them such as happened in the Kingdom of Valencia A. D. 1344. in the Kingdom of Aragon A. D. 1398. in Barcelona A. D. 1408. and 1435. and 1437. In Catalonia A. D. 1451. and 1461. In all which drawn from the publick Records he saith the Princes were forced to use their utmost power to repress them for the present and prevent them for the future So in the Kingdom of Murcia A. D. 1507. in Boetica or Andaluzia A. D. 1503. in Castile A. D. 1480. The like scandals he mentions in Germany and Italy on the same account and withall he saith that these continued notwithstanding all the endeavours of Popes Princes Bishops and Vniversities but the tumults he saith that happened of later years in Spain were incredibly turbulent and scandalous and drawn from the authentick Registers which were sent by the several Cities to the King and by the King to the Pope which were so great that those alone were enough to move the Pope to make a Definition in this Controversie Especially considering that the same scandals had continued for 300 years among them and did continue still notwithstanding Paul 5. Constitution Which is no wonder at all considering what the Bishop of Malaga reports that the Iesuits perswade the people to defend the immaculate conception with sword and fire and with their blood And I now only desire to know whether these be meer disputes of the Schools among them oâ— no and whether they have not produced as great disorders and tumults among the people as controversies about points of faith are wont to do So that upon the whole matter whether we respect the peace of the world or factious disputes in Religion I see no advantage at all the Church of Rome hath above others and therefore reading the Scriptures can be no cause of divisions among us since they have been so many and great among those who have most prudentially dispensed or rather forbidden it Which was the thing I intended to prove CHAP. VI. An Answer to the Remainder of the Reply The mis-interpreting Scripture doth not hinder its being a rule of faith Of the superstitious observations of the Roman Church Of Indulgences the practice of them in what time begun on what occasion and in what terms granted Of the Indulgences in Iubilees in the Churches at Rome and upon saying some Prayers Instances of them produced What opinion hath been had of Indulgences in the
Church of Rome some confess they have no foundation in Scripture or Antiquity others that they are pious frauds the miserable shifts the defenders of indulgences were put to plain evidences of their fraud from the Disputes of the Schools about them The treasure of the Church invented by Aquinas and on what occasion The wickedness of men increased by Indulgences acknowledged by their own Writers and therefore condemned by many of that Church Of Bellarmins prudent Christians opinion of them Indulgences no meer relaxations of Canonical Penance The great absurdity of the doctrine of the Churches Treasure on which Indulgences are founded at large manifested The tendency of them to destroy devotion proved by experience and the nature of the Doctrine Of Communion in one kind no devotion in opposing an Institution of Christ. Of the Popes power of dispensing contrary to the Law of God in Oaths and Marriages The ill consequence of asserting Marriage in a Priest to be worse than Fornication as it is in the Church of Rome Of the uncertainty of faith therein How far revelation to be believed against sense The arguments to prove the uncertainty of their faith defended The case of a revolter and a bred Papist compared as to salvation and the greater danger of one than the other proved The motives of the Roman Church considered those laid down by Bishop Taylor fully answered by himself An account of the faith of Protestants laid down in the way of Principles wherein the grounds and nature of our certainty of faith are cleared And from the whole concluded that there can be no reasonable cause to forsake the communion of the Church of England and to embrace that of the Church of Rome § 1. HAving thus far Vindicated the Scriptures from being the cause by being read among us of all the Sects and Fanaticisms which have been in England I now return to the consideration of the Remainder of his Reply And one thing still remains to be cleared concerning the Scripture which is whether it can be a most certain rule of faith and life since among Protestants it is left to the private interpretation of every fanciful spirit which is as much as to ask whether any thing can be a rule which may be mis-understood by those who are to be guided by it or whether it be fit the people should know the Laws they are to be governed by because it is a dangerous thing to mis-interpret Laws and none are so apt to do it as the common people I dare say St. Augustin never thought that Heresies arising from mis-understanding Scriptures were a sufficient argument against their being a Rule of faith or being read by the people as appears by his discoursing to them in the place quoted by him For then he must have said to them to this purpose Good people ye perceive from whence Heresies spring therefore as you would preserve your soundness in the faith abstain from reading the Scriptures or looking on them as your rule mind the Traditions of the Church but trust not your selves with the reading what God himself caused to be writ it cannot be denyed that the Scriptures have far greater excellency in them than any other writings in the world but you ought to consider the best and most useful things are the most dangerous when abused What is more necessary to the life of man than eating and drinking yet where lyes intemperance and the danger of surfetting but in the use of these What keeps men more in their wits than sleeping yet when are men so lyable to have their throats cut as in the use of that What more pleasant to the eyes than to see the Sun yet what is there so like to put them out as to stare too long upon him Therefore since the most necessary and useful things are most dangerous when they are abused my advice must be that ye forbear eating sleeping and seeing for fear of being surfetted murdred or losing your sight which you know to be very bad things I cannot deny but that the Scriptures are called the bread of life the food of our souls the light of our eyes the guide of our wayes yet since there may be so much danger in the use of food of light and of a Guide it is best for you to abstain from them Would any man have argued like St. Augustin that should talk at this rate yet this must have been his way of arguing if his meaning had been to have kept the people from reading the Scriptures because Heresies arise from mis-understanding them But all that he inferrs from thence is what became a wise man to say viz. that they should be cautious in affirming what they did not understand and that hanc tenentes regulam sanitatis holding this still as our rule of soundness in the faith with great humility what we are able to understand according to the faith we have received we ought to rejoyce in it as our food what we cannot we ought not presently to doubt of but take time to understand it and though we know it not at present we ought not to question it to be good and true and afterwards saith that was his own case as well as theirs What S. Augustine a Guide and Father of the Church put himself equal with the people in reading and understanding Scriptures In which we not only see his humility but how far he was from thinking that this argument would any more exclude the people from reading the Scriptures than the great Doctors of the Church For I pray were they the common people who first broached Heresies in the Christian Church Were Arius Nestorius Macedonius Eutyches or the great abettors of their Doctrines any of the Vulgar If this argument then holds at all it must hold especially against men of parts and learning that have any place in the Church for they are much more in danger of spreading Heresies by mis-interpreting Scriptures than any others are But among Protestants he saith Scripture is left to the Fanciful interpretation of every private Spirit If he speaks of our Church he knows the contrary and that we profess to follow the unanimous consent of the primitive Fathers as much as they and embrace the doctrine of the four General Councils But if there have been some among us who have followed their own Fancies in interpreting Scripture we can no more help that than they can do in theirs and I dare undertake to make good that there have never been more absurd ridiculous and Fanciful Interpretations of Scripture than not the common people but the Heads of their Church have made and other persons in greatest reputation among them Which though too large a task for this present design may ere long be the subject of another For the authority of Henry 8. in the testimony produced from him when they yield to it in the point of Supremacy we may do it in the six articles or other
whence only they derive their infallibility 18. There can be no hazard to any person in mistaking the meaning of any particular place in those books supposing he use the best means for understanding them comparable to that which every one runs who believes any person or society of men to be infallible who are not for in this latter he runs unavoidably into one great errour and by that may be led into a thousand but in the former God hath promised either he shall not erre or he shall not be damned for it 19. The assistance which God hath promised to those who sincerely desire to know his will may give them greater assurance of the truth of what is contained in the bookes of Scripture than it is possible for the greatest infallibility in any other persons to doe supposing they have not such assurance of their infallibility 20. No mans faith can therefore be infallible meerly because the Proponent is said to be infallible because the nature of Assent doth not depend upon the objective infallibility of any thing without us but is agreeable to the evidence we have of it in our minds for assent is not built on the nature of things but their evidence to us 21. It is therefore necessary in order to an infallible assent that every particular person be infallibly assisted in Judging of the matters proposed to him to be believed so that the ground on which a necessity of some external infallible Proponent is asserted must rather make every particular person infallible if no divine faith can be without an infallible assent and so renders any other infallibility useless 22. If no particular person be infallible in the assent he gives to matters proposed by others to him then no man can be infallibly sure that the Church is infallible and so the Churches infallibility can signifie nothing to our infallible assurance without an equal infallibility in our selves in the belief of it 23. The infallibility of every particular person being not asserted by those who plead for the infallibility of a Church and the one rendring the other useless for if every person be infallible what need any representative Church to be so and the infallibility of a Church being of no effect if every person be not infallible in the belief of it we are farther to inquire what certainty men may have in matters of faith supposing no external proponent to be infallible 24. There are different degrees of certainty to be attained according to the different degrees of evidence and measure of divine assistance but every Christian by the use of his reason and common helps of Grace may attain to so great a degree of certainty from the convincing arguments of the Christian Religion and authority of the Scriptures that on the same grounds on which men doubt of the truth of them they may as well doubt of the truth of those things which they Judge to be most evident to sense or reason 25. No man who firmly assents to any thing as true can at the same time entertaine any suspition of the falshood of it for that were to make him certain and uncertain of the same thing it is therefore absurd to say that those who are certain of what they believe may at the same time not know but it may be false which is an apparent contradiction and overthrowes any faculty in us of judging of truth or falshood 26. Whatever necessarily proves a thing to be true doth at the same time prove it impossible to be false because it is impossible the same thing should be true and false at the same time Therefore they who assent firmly to the doctrine of the Gospel as true doe thereby declare their belief of the Impossibility of the falshood of it 27. The nature of certainty doth receive several names either according to the nature of the proof or the degrees of the assent Thus moral certainty may be so called either as it is opposed to Mathematical evidence but implying a firme assent upon the highest evidence that Moral things can receive or as it is opposed to a higher degree of certainty in the same kind so Moral certainty implies only greater probabilities of one side than the other in the former sense we assert the certainty of Christian faith to be moral but not only in the latter 28. A Christian being thus certain to the highest degree of a firme assent that the Scriptures are the word of God his faith is thereby resolved into the Scriptures as into the rule and measure of what he is to believe as it is into the veracity of God as the ground of his believing what is therein contained 29. No Christian can be obliged under any pretence of infallibility to believe any thing as a matter of faith but what was revealed by God himself in that book wherein he believes his will to be contained and consequently is bound to reject whatsoever is offered to be imposed upon his faith which hath no foundation in Scripture or is contrary thereto which rejection is no making Negative Articles of faith but only applying the general grounds of faith to particular instances as because I believe nothing necessary to salvation but what is contained in Scripture therefore no such particular things which neither are there nor can be deduced thence 30. There can be no better way to prevent mens mistakes in the sense of Scripture which men being fallible are subject to than the considering the consequence of mistaking in a matter wherein their salvation is concerned And there can be no sufficient reason given why that may not serve in matters of faith which God himself hath made use of as the means to keep men from sin in their lives unless any imagine that errours in opinion are far more dangerous to mens souls than a vitious life is and therefore God is bound to take more care to prevent the one than the other It followeth that 1. There is no necessity at all or use of an infallible Society of men to assure men of the truth of those things which they may be certain without and cannot have any greater assurance supposing such infallibility to be in them 2. The infallibility of that Society of men who call themselves the Catholick Church must be examined by the same faculties in man the same rules of tryal the same motives by which the infallibility of any divine revelation is 3. The less convincing the miracles the more doubtful the marks the more obscure the sense of either what is called the Catholick Church or declared by it the less reason hath any Christian to believe upon the account of any who call themselves by the name of the Catholick Church 4. The more absurd any opinions are and repugnant to the first principles of sense and reason which any Church obtrudes upon the faith of men the greater reason men still have to reject the pretence of infallibility in that Church as a
The language of prayer proved to be no indifferent thing from St. Pauls arguments No universal consent for prayers in an unknown tongue by the confession of their own Writers Of their doctrine of the efficacy of Sacraments that it takes away all necessity of devotion in the minds of the receivers This complained of by Cassander and Arnaud but proved against them to be the doctrine of the Roman Church by the Canons of the Council of Trent The great easiness of getting Grace by their Sacraments Of their discouraging the reading the Scriptures A standing Rule of devotion necessary None so fit to give it as God himself This done by him in the Scriptures All persons therefore concerned to read them The arguments against reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing them in a language known to the peâ—ple The dangers as great then as ever have been since The greatest prudence of the Roman Church is wholly to forbid the Scriptures being acknowledged by their wisest men to be so contrary to their Interest The confession of the Cardinals at Bononia to that purpose The avowed practice of the Roman Church herein directly contrary to that of the Primitive although the reasons were as great then from the danger of Heresies This confessed by their own Writers p. 178 CHAP. IV. Of the Fanaticism of the Roman Church The unreasonableness of objecting Sects and Fanaticisms to us as the effects of reading the Scriptures Fanaticism countenanced in the Roman Church but condemned by ours Private revelations made among them the grounds of believing some points of doctrine proved from their own Authors Of the Revelations pleaded for the immaculate Conception The Revelations of S. Brigitt and S. Catharin directly contrary in this point yet both owned in the Church of Rome The large approbations of S. Brigitts by Popes and Councils and both their revelations acknowledged to be divine in the lessons read upon their dayes S. Catharines wonderful faculty of smelling souls a gift peculiar to her and Philip Nerius The vain attempts of reconciling those Revelations The great number of female Revelations approved in the Roman Church Purgatory Transubstantiation Auricular Confession proved by Visions and Revelations Festivals appointed upon the credit of Revelations the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Revelation made to Juliana the Story of it related from their own Writers No such things can be objected to our Church Revelations still owned by them proved from the Fanatick Revelations of Mother Juliana very lately published by Mr. Cressy Some instances of the blasphemous Nonsense contained in them The Monastick Orders founded in Enthusiasm An account of the great Fanaticism of S. Benedict and S. Romoaldus their hatred of Humane Learning and strange Visions and Revelations The Carthusian Order founded upon a Vision The Carmalites Vision of their habit The Franciscan and Dominican Orders founded on Fanaticism and seen in a Vision of Innocent the third to be the great supporters of the Roman Church The Quakerism of S. Francis described from their best Authors His Ignorance Extasies and Fanatick Preaching The Vision of Dominicus The blasphemous Enthusiasm of the Mendicant Fryers The History of it related at large Of the Evangelium aeternum and the blasphemies contained in it The Author of it supposed to be the General of the Franciscan Order however owned by the Fryers and read and preached at Paris The opposition to it by the Vniversity but favoured by the Popes Gul. S. Amour writing against it his Book publickly burnt by order of the Court of Rome The Popes horrible partiality to the Fryers The Fanaticism of the Franciscans afterwards of the followers of Petrus Johannis de Oliva The Spiritual State began say they from S. Francis The story of his wounds and Maria Visitationis paralleld The canting language used by the spiritual Brethren called Beguini Fraticelli and Bigardi Of their doctrines about Poverty Swearing Perfection the Carnal Church and Inspiration by all which they appear to be a Sect of Quakers after the Order of S. Francis Of the Schism made by them The large spreading and long continuance of them Of the Apostolici and Dulcinistae Of their numerous Conventicles Their high opinion of themselves Their Zeal against the Clergy and Tythes their doctrine of Christian Liberty Of the Alumbrado's in Spain their disobedience to Bishops obstinate adhering to their own fancies calling them Inspirations their being above Ordinances Ignatius Loyola suspected to be one of the Illuminati proved from Melchior Canus The Iesuites Order founded in Fanaticism a particular account of the Romantick Enthusiasm of Ignatius from the Writers of his own Order Whereby it is proved that he was the greatest pretender to Enthusiasm since the dayes of Mahomet and S. Francis Ignatius gave no respect to men by words or putting off his Hat his great Ignorance and Preaching in the Streets his glorying in his sufferings for it his pretence to mortification the wayes he used to get disciples Their way of resolution of difficulties by seeking God their itinerant preaching in the Cities of Italy The Sect of Quakers a new Order of Disciples of Ignatius only wanting confirmation from the Pope which Ignatius obtained Of the Fanatick way of devotion in the Roman Church Of Superstitious and Enthusiastical Fanaticism among them Of their mystical Divinity Mr. Cressy's canting in his Preface to Sancta Sophia Of the Deiform fund of the soul a superessential life and the way to it Of contemplating with the will Of passive Vnions The method of self-Annihilation Of the Vnion of nothing with nothing Of the feeling of not-being The mischief of an unintelligible way of devotion The utmost effect of this way is gross Enthusiasm Mr. Cressy's Vindication of it examined The last sort of Fanaticism among them resisting authority under pretence of Religion Their principles and practices compared with the Fanaticks How far they are disowned at present by them Of the Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance The Court of Rome hath alwayes favoured that party which is most destructive to Civil Government proved by particular and late Instances p. 235 CHAP. V. Of the Divisions of the Roman Church The great pretence of Vnity in the Church of Rome considered The Popes Authority the fountain of that Vnity what that Authority is which is challenged by the Popes over the Christian World the disturbances which have happened therein on the account of it The first Revolt of Rome from the Empire caused by the Popes Baronius his Arguments answered Rebellion the foundation of the greatness of that Church The cause of the strict League between the Popes and the posterity of Charles Martel The disturbances made by Popes in the new Empire Of the quarrels of Greg. 7. with the Empeperour and other Christian Princes upon the pretence of the Popes Authority More disturbances on that account in Christendome than any other matter of Religion Of the Schisms which have happened in the Roman Church particularly those
after the time of Formosus wherein his Ordinations were nulled by his successors the Popes opposition to each other in that Age the miserable state of that Church then described Of the Schisms of latter times by the Italick and Gallick factions the long continuance of them The mischief of those Schisms on their own principles Of the divisions in that Church about the matters of Order and Government The differences between the Bishops and the Monastick Orders about exemptions and priviledges the history of that Controversie and the bad success the Popes had in attempting to compose it Of the quarrel between the Regulars and Seculars in England The continuance of that Controversie here and in France The Jesuits enmity to the Episcopal Order and jurisdiction the hard case of the Bishop of Angelopolis in America The Popes still favour the Regulars as much as they dare The Jesuits way of converting the Chinese discovered by that Bishop Of the differences in matters of Doctrine in that Church They have no better way to compose them than we The Popes Authority never truly ended one Controversie among them Their wayes to evade the decisions of Popes and Councils Their dissensions are about matters of faith The wayes taken to excuse their own difference will make none between them and us manifested by Sancta Clara's exposition oâ— the 39. Articles Their disputes not confined to their Schools proved by a particular instance about the immaculate conception the infinite scandals confessed by theiâ— own Authors to have been in their Church about it From all which it appears that the Church of Rome can have no advantage in point of Vnity above ours p. 355 CHAP. VI. An Answer to the Remainder of the Reply The mis-interpreting Scripture doth not hinder its being a rule of faith Of the superstitious observations of the Roman Church Of Indulgences the practice of them in what time begun on what occasion and in what terms granted Of the Indulgences in Iubilees in the Churches at Rome and upon saying some Prayers Instances of them produced What opinion hath been had of Indulgences in the Church of Rome some confess they have no foundation in Scripture or Antiquity others that they are pious frauds the miserable shifts the defenders of indulgences were put to plain evidences of their fraud from the Disputes of the Schools about them The treasure of the Church invented by Aquinas and on what occasion The wickedness of men increased by Indulgences acknowledged by their own Writers and therefore condemned by many of that Church Of Bellarmins prudent Christians opinion of them Indulgences no meer relaxations of Canonical Penance The great absurdity of the doctrine of the Churches Treasure on which Indulgences are founded at large manifested The tendency of them to destroy devotion proved by experience and the nature of the Doctrine Of Communion in one kind no devotion in opposing an Institution of Christ. Of the Popes power of dispensing contrary to the Law of God in Oaths and Marriages The ill consequence of asserting Marriage in a Priest to be worse than Fornication as it is in the Church of Rome Of the uncertainty of faith therein How far revelation to be believed against sense The arguments to prove the uncertainty of their faith defended The case of a revolter and a bred Papist compared as to salvation and the greater danger of one than the other proved The motives of the Roman Church considered those laid down by Bishop Taylor fully answered by himself An account of the faith of Protestants laid down in the way of Principles wherein the grounds and nature of our certainty of faith are cleared And from the whole concluded that there can be no reasonable cause to forsake the communion of the Church of England and to embrace that of the Church of Rome p. 476 ERRATA PAg. 25. l. 19. for adjuverit r. adjuvet p. ibid. Marg. r. l. 7. de baptis p. 31. Marg. r. Tract 18. in Ioh. p. 64. l. 13. dele only p. 75. Marg. r. Trigaut p. 101. l. 24. for I am r. am I p. 119. l. 28. for is r. in p. 135. Marg. for 68. r. 6. 8. p. 162. l. 17. after did put not Ch. 3. for pennance r. penance p. 219. l. 10. for him r. them p. 257. l. 21. for or r. and l. 31. for never r. ever p. 350. l. 21. for their r. the p. 414. l. 18. for these r. their p. 416. Marg. for nibaldi r. Sinibaldi p. 417. l. 2. before another insert one p. 499. l. 16. after not insert at p. 526. Marg. for act r. art p. 546. l. 8. after for insert one Two Questions proposed by one of the Church of Rome WHether a Protestant haveing the same Motives to become a Catholick which one bred and born and well grounded in the Catholick Religion hath to remain in it may not equally be saved in the profession of it 2. Whether it be sufficient to be a Christian in the abstract or in the whole latitude or there be a necessity of being a member of some distinct Church or Congregation of Christians Answer The first Question being supposed to be put concerning a Protestant yet continuing so doth imply a contradiction viz. That a Protestant continuing so should have the same Motives to become a Catholick takeing that term here only as signifying one of the communion of the Church of Rome which those have who have been born or bred in that communion But supposing the meaning of the Question to be this Whether a Protestant leaving the communion of our Church upon the Motives used by those of the Roman Church may not be equally saved with those who are bred in it I answer 1. That an equal capacity of salvation of those persons being supposed can be no argument to leave the communion of a Church wherein salvation of a person may be much more safe than of either of them No more than it is for a man to leap from the plain ground into a Ship that is in danger of being wrackt because he may equally hope to be saved with those who are in it Nay supposing an equal capacity of salvation in two several Churches there can be no reason to forsake the communion of the one for the other So that to perswade any one to leave our Church to embrace that of Rome it is by no means sufficient to ask whether such a one may not as well be saved as they that are in it already but it is necessary that they prove that it is of necessity to salvation to leave our Church and become a member of theirs And when they do this I intend to be one of their number 2. We assert that all those who are in the communion of the Church of Rome do run so great a hazard of their salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace it or continue in it And that upon these grounds 1. Because they must
some degrees of Consanguinity and Affinity but in nothing contrary to the Law of God His tenth pretended Obstruction of Devotion is that we make disobedience to the Church in Disputable matters more hainous than disobedience to Christ in unquestionable things as Marriage he saith in a Priest to be a greater crime than Fornication I Answer That whether a Priest may Marry or no supposing the Law of the Church forbidding it is not a disputable matter but 't is out of Question even by the Law of God that Obedience is to be given to the Commands or Prohibitions of the Church The Antithesis therefore between disobedience to the Church in disputable matters and disobedience to the Laws of Christ in unquestionable things is not only impertinent to the Marriage of Priests which is unquestionably forbidden but supposing the matter to remain disputable after the Churches Prohibition destroys all obedience to the Church But if it suppose them only disputable before then why may not the Church interpose her Iudgement and put them out of dispute But still it seems strange to them who either cannot or will not take the Word of Christ that is his Counsel of Chastitie that Marriage in a Priest should be a greater sin than Fornication But he considers not that though Marriage in it self be honourable yet if it be prohibited to a certain order of persons by the Church to whom Christ himself commands us to give obedience and they oblige themselves by a voluntary vow to live in perpetual Chastity the Law of God commanding us to pay our Vows it loses its honour in such persons and if contracted after such vow made is in the language of the Fathers no better than Adultery In the primitive Church it was the custome of some Younger Widdows to Dedicate themselves to the Service of the Church and in order thereunto to take upon them a peculiar habit and make a vow of continency for the future Now in case they Married after this St. Paul himself 1 Tim. 1. 12. saith That they incurred Damnation because by so doing they made void their first faith that is as the Fathers Expound it the vow they had made And the fourth Council of Carthage in which were 214 Bishops and among them St. Austin gives the Reason in these words If Wives who commit Adultery are guilty to their Husbands how much more shall such Widdows as change their Religious State be noted with the crime of Adultery And if this were so in Widdows much more in Priests if by Marrying they shall make void their first Faith given to God when they were consecrated in a more peculiar manner to his Service Thus much may suffice for Answer to the Argument which with its intricate terms may seem to puzzle an unlearned Reader let us now speak a word to the true state of the Controversie which is whether Marriage or single life in a Priest be more apt to obstruct or further devotion And St. Paul himself hath determined the Question 1 Cor. 7. 32. where he saith He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to our Lord how he may please our Lord But he that is Married careth for the things that are of the World how be may please his Wife This is the difference he putteth between the Married and Single life that this is apt to make us care for the things which belong to God and that to divert our thoughts from him to the things of the World Iudge therefore which of these states is most convenient for Priests whose proper office it is to attend wholly to the things of God Having thus cleared Catholick Doctrines from being any wayes obstructive to good life or devotion I shall proceed to his third Argument by which he will still prove that Catholicks run a great hazard of their souls in adhering to the Communion of the Church of Rome Because it exposeth the Faith of Christians to so great uncertainty This is a strange charge from the pen of a Protestant who hath no other certainty for his faith but every mans interpretation of the Letter of the Scriptures But First he saith it doth this By making the Authority of the Scriptures to depend upon the infallibility of the Church when the Churches infallibility must be proved by the Scriptures To this I Answer that the Authority of the Scripture not in it self for so it hath its Authority from God but in order to us and our belief of it depends upon the infallibility of the Church And therefore St. Austin saith of himself That he would not believe the Gospel unless the Authority of the Catholick Church did move him And if you ask him what moved him to submit to that Authority he tells you That besides the Wisdom he found in the Tenets of the Church there were many other things which most justly held him in it as the consent of people and Nations an Authority begun by Miracles nourished by hope increased by Charity and established by Antiquity the succession of Priests from the very seat of St. Peter to whom our Lord commended the feeding of his Sheep unto the present Bishoprick Lastly The very name of Catholick which this Church alone among so many Heresies hath not without cause obtained so particularly to her self that whereas all Hereticks would be called Catholicks yet if a stranger demand where the Catholicks go to Church none of these Hereticks dares to shew either his own house or Church These saith St. Austin so many and great most dear bonds of the name of Christian do justly hold a believing man in the Catholick Church These were the grounds which moved that great man to submit to her Authority And when Catholick Authors prove the infallibility of the Church from Scriptures 't is an Argument ad hominem to convince Protestants who will admit nothing but Scripture and yet when they are convinced quarrel at them as illogical disputants because they prove it from Scripture Next he saith we overthrow all foundation of Faith because We will not believe our sences in the plainest objects of them But what if God have interposed his Authority as he hath done in the case of the Eucharist where he tells us that it is his Body must we believe our sences rather than God or must we not believe them in other things because in the particular case of the Eucharist we must believe God rather than our sences Both these consequences you see are absurd Now for the case it self in which he instances Dr. Taylor above cited confesses that they viz. Catholicks have a divine Revelation viz. Christs word This is my Body whose Litteral and Grammatical sence if that sence were intended would warrant them to do violence to all the Sciences in the Circle but I add it would be no precedent to them not to believe their sences in other the plainest objects of them as in the matter of Tradition or Christs body after the
Proph. Sect. 20. Speaking of Catholicks The beauty and Splendour of their Church their pompous he should have said solemn Service the stateliness and solemnity of the Hierarchy their name of Catholick which they suppose he should have said their very Adversaries give them as their own due and to concern no other Sect of Christians the Antiquity of many of their Doctrines he should have said all the continual succession of their Bishops their immediate derivation from the Apostles their Title to succeed St. Peter the flattering he should have said due expression of Minor Bishops he means acknowledging the Pope head of the Church which by being old records have obtained credibility the multitude and variety of People which are of their perswasion apparent consent with Antiquity in many Ceremonials which other Churches have rejected and a pretended and sometimes he should have said alwayes apparent consent with some elder Ages in matters Doctrinal The great consent of one part with another in that which most of them affirm to be de fide of Faith The great differences which are commenced among their Adversaries abusing the liberty of Prophecying into a very great licentiousness Their happiness of being Instruments in converting divers he should rather have said of all Nations The piety and austerity of their Religious Orders of Men and Women The single life of their Priests and Bishops the severity of their Fasts and their exteriour observances the great reputation of their first Bishops for faith and sanctity the known holiness of some of those persons whose institutes the Religious persons pretend to imitate the oblique Arts and indirect proceedings of some of those who departed from them and amongst many other things the names of Heretick and Schismatick which they with infinite pertinacity he should have said upon the same grounds the Fathers did fasten upon all that disagree from them These things saith he and divers others may very easily perswade persons of much reason and more piety to retain that which they know to have been the Religion of their Fore-fathers which had actually possession and seizure of mens understandings before the opposite professions to wit of Protestant Presbyterian Anabaptist c. had a name Thus Dr. Taylor an eminent and leading man amongst the Protestants and if he confess that these Motives were sufficient for a Catholick to retain his Religion they must be of like force to perswade a dis-interessed Protestant to embrace it unless the Protestants can produce Motives for their Religion of greater or at least equal force with these which so great a man among them confesseth that Catholicks have for theirs Here therefore you must call upon the Author of the Paper you sent me to produce a Catalogue of grounds or at least some one ground for the Protestant Religion of greater or equal force with all these And as Dr. Taylor saith divers others which he omitted viz. The Scripture interpreted by the consent of Fathers the determination of General Councils the known Maxime of Catholicks that nothing is to be believed of Faith but what was received from their Fore-fathers as handed down from the Apostles The testimonie of the present Church of no less Authority now than in St. Austins time both for the Letter and the sence of the Scripture c. Do this and the Controversie will quickly be at an end Particular disputes are endless and above the understanding of such as are not learned but in grounds and principles 't is not so hard for Reason and common sence to Iudge That you may the better do it in your case I shall desire you to take these two Cautions along with you First That the Subject of the present Controversie are not those Articles in which the Protestants agree with us and for which they may pretend to produce the same Motives we do But in those in which they dissent from us such as are no Transubstantiation no Purgatory no honour due to Images no Invocation to Saints and the like in which the very Essence of Protestant as distinct from Catholick consists What Motives they can or will produce for these I do not foresee The pretence of Scriptures being sufficiently plain hath no place here because then the foresaid Negatives would be necessary to be believed as divine Truths And for their own Reason and Learning it will be found too light when put into the scale against that of the Catholick Church for so many Ages The second Caution is That you be careful to distinguish between Protestants producing grounds for their own Religion and finding fault with ours An Atheist can cavil and find fault with the grounds which learned men bring to prove a Deity such as are the Order of this visible World the general consent of Nations c. In this an Atheist thinks he doth somewhat But can he produce as good or better grounds for his own opinion No you see then 't is one thing to produce grounds for what we hold and another to find fault with those which are produced by the contrary part The latter hath made Controversie so long and the former will make it as short let the Answerer therefore instead of finding fault with our Motives produce his own for the Articles in Controversie and I am confident you will quickly discern which carry the most weight and consequently which are to be preferred A Defence of the foregoing Answer to the Questions CHAP. I. Of the Idolatry practised in the Church of Rome in the Worship of Images The introduction concerning the occasion of the debate The Church of Rome makes its members guilty of Hypocrisie or Idolatry First Of the Worship of God by Images Some propositions for clearing the notion of Divine Worship It is in Gods power to determine the way of his Worship which being determined Gods Law and not our intention is to be the rule of Worship The main question is Whether God hath forbidden the worshipping of himself by an Image under the notion of Idolatry Of the meaning of the second Commandment from the terms therein used the large sense and importance of them which cannot be understood only of Heathen Idols Of the reason of that Law from Gods infinite and invisible nature How far that hath been acknowledged by Heathens The Law against Image Worship no ceremonial Law respecting meerly the Iews the reason against it made more clear by the Gospel The wiser Heathen did not worship their Images as Gods yet their worship condemned as Idolatry The Christian Church believed the reason of this Law to be immutable Of the Doctrine of the second Council of Nice the opposition to it in Greece Germany France and England Of the Scripture Instances of Idolatry contrary to the second Commandment in the Golden Calf and the Calves of Dan and Bethel Of the distinctions used to excuse image-worship from being Idolatry The vanity and folly of them The instances supposed to be parallel answered Madam § 1. THat
ought not only perform the offices of Religion out of obedience to his divine commands but with a due Veneration of his Majesty and power with thankfulness for his infinite goodness and with trust in his promises and subjection of our souls to his supream Authority About these things which are the main parts of divine and spiritual Worship we have no quarrel nor do we find fault with any for giving too much to Christ in this manner but rather for placing too much in the bare external acts of adoration which may be performed with all external pomp and shew where there is no inward reverence nor sincere devotion And yet 4. It is not concerning external Reverence to be shewn in the time of receiving the Eucharist For that our Church not only allowes but enjoynes and that not barely for the avoiding such profanation and disorder in the holy Communion as might otherwise ensue but for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefit of Christ therein given to all worthy receivers But it is withall declared that thereby no Adoration is intended or ought to be done either unto the Sacramental Bread and Wine there bodily received or unto any corporal presence of Christs natural flesh and blood as I have already recited it But the Controversie concerning the adoration of the Host lyes in these two things 1. Whether proper divine Worship in the time of receiving the Eucharist may be given to the Elements on the account of a corporal presence of Christ under them 2. Whether out of the time of receiving the same adoration ought to be given to it when it is elevated or carried in procession which we would give to the very person of Christ And that this is the true state of the Controversie I appeal to the doctrine and practice of the Roman Church in this point For it is expresly determined by the Council of Trent That there is no manner of doubt left but that all Christians ought to give the same Worship to this holy Sacrament which they give to God himself For it is not therefore less to be Worshipped because it was instituted by Christ our Lord that it might be taken By which words the true state of the Controversie is made evident which is not about the reverence due only to Christ supposed to be corporally present there but the adoration due to the Sacrament upon that account And by the Sacrament the Council must understand the elements or accidents or whatever name they call them by as the immediate term of that divine Worship or else the latter words signifie nothing at all For what was that which was instituted by our Lord as a Sacrament was it not the external and visible signes or elements why do they urge that the Sacrament ought not the less to be adored because it was to be taken but to take off the common objection that we ought not to give divine Worship to that which we eat And what can this have respect to but the Elements But this is not denyed that I know of by any who understand either the doctrine or practice of that Church although to answer our Arguments they would seem to direct their Worship only to Christ as present under the elements yet yielding that on the account of this corporal presence that which appears ought to have the same Worship given to it with that which is supposed or believed And so they make the accidents of the Sacrament to have the very same honour which the humane nature of Christ hath which they say hath no divine honour for it self but on the account of the conjunction of the divinity with it § 4. The Controversie being thus stated I come to shew that upon the Principles of the Roman Church no man can be assured that he doth not commit Idolatry every time he gives Adoration to the Host. For it is a principle indisputable among them that to give proper divine honour called by them Adoration to a creature is Idolatry but no man upon the principles of their Church can be assured every time he Worships the Host that he doth not give proper divine honour to a creature For there are two things absolutely necessary to secure a mans mind in the performance of an act of divine Worship 1. That either the object be such in it self which deserves and requires such Worship from us as in the divine nature of Christ Or 2. That if of it self it doth not deserve it there be a reason sufficient to give it as is the humane nature of Christ upon its union with the Divine but in this matter of the adoration of the Host no man can be secure of either of these upon their own Principles 1. He cannot be secure that the object is such as doth deserve divine worship If a man should chance to believe his senses or hearken to his reason or at least think the matter disputable whether that which he sees to be bread be not really bread what case is this man in He becomes an Idolater by not being a fool or a mad man But because we are not now to proceed upon the principles of sense or reason but those of the Church of Rome I will suppose the case of one that goes firmly upon the received principles of it and try whether such a one can be satisfied in his mind that when he gives divine worship to the Host he doth not give it to a creature And because we are now supposing unreasonable things I will suppose my self to be that person The Mass-bell now rings and I must give the same divine honour to the Host which I do to Christ himself but hold if it should be but a meer creature all the world cannot excuse me from Idolatry and my own Church condemns me all agreeing that this is gross Idolatry how come I then to be assured that what but a little before was a meer creature is upon the pronouncing a few words turned into my Creator A strange and sudden change And I can hardly say that God becoming man was so great a wonder as a little piece of bread becoming God When God became man he shewed himself to be God by Wonders and Miracles which he wrought for the conviction of the world I will see if I can find any such evidence of so wonderful a transformation from a Wafer to a Deity I see it to be the very same it was I handle it as I did if I taste it it hath the very same agreeableness to the Palat it had Where then lyes this mighty change But O carnal reason what have I to do with thee in these mysteries of faith I remember what Church I am of and how much I am bid to beware of thee but how then shall I be satisfied Must I relye on the bare words of Christ This is my body But I have been told the Scripture is very obscure and
is not God and therefore that honour ought not to be given it and I am further told by them that the Church hath never determined this controversie Let me now apply this to our present case It is certain if the body of Christ be present in the Eucharist as distinct from the divine nature I am not not to adore it It is very uncertain if it be present whether I am to give divine worship to the body of Christ but it is most certain that if I worship Christ in the Sacrament it is upon the account of his corporal presence For although when I worship the person of Christ as out of the Sacrament my worship is terminated upon him as God and man and the reason of my worship is wholly drawn from his divine nature yet when I worship Christ as in the Sacrament I must worship him there upon the account of his bodily presence for I have no other reason to Worship him in the Sacrament but because his body is present in it And this is not barely determining the place of Worship but assigning the cause of it for the primary reason of all adoration in the Sacrament is because Christ hath said this is my body which words if they should be allowed to imply Transubstantiation cannot be understood of any other change than of the bread into the body of Christ. And if such a sense were to be put upon it why may not I imagine much more agreeably to the nature of the institution that the meer humane nature of Christ is there than that his Divinity should be there in a particular manner present to no end and where it makes not the least manifestation of it self But if I should yield all that can be begged in this kind viz. that the body of Christ being present his divinity is there present too yet my mind must unavoidably rest unsatisfied still as to the adoration of the Host. For supposing the divine nature present in any thing gives no ground upon that account to give the same Worship to the thing wherein he is present as I do to Christ himself This the more considerative men of the Roman Church are aware of but the different wayes they have taken to answer it rather increase mens doubts than satisfie them Greg. de Valentiâ denies not that divine honour is given by them to the Eucharist and that the accidents remaining after Consecration are the term of adoration not for themselves but by reason of the admirable conjunction which they have with Christ. Which is the very same which they say of the humane nature of Christ and yet this same person denies that they are hypostatically united to him which if any one can understand I shall not envy him Bellarmin in answer to this argument is forced to grant as great an hypostatical union between Christ and the Sacrament as between the divine and humane nature for when he speaks of that he saith it lyes in this that the humane nature loseth its own proper subsistence and it assumed into the subsistence of the divine nature and in the case of the Sacrament he yields such a losing the proper subsistence of the bread and that what ever remains makes no distinct suppositum from the body of Christ but all belong to him and make one with him and therefore may be Worshipped as he is Is not this an admirable way of easing the minds of dissatisfied persons about giving adoration to the Host to fill them with such unintelligible terms and notions which it is impossible for them to understand themselves or explain to others Vasquez therefore finding well that the force of the argument lay in the presence of Christ and that from thence they must at last derive only the ground of adoration very ingenuously yields the Consequence and grants that God may very lawfully be adored by us in any created being wherein he is intimately present and this he not only grants but contends for in a set disputation wherein he proves very well from the principles of Worship allowed in the Roman Church that God may be adored in inanimate and irrational beings as well as in Images and answers all the arguments the very same way that they defend the other and that we way Worship the Sun as lawfully and with the same kind of Worship that they do an Image and that men may be worshipped with the same worship with which we Worship God himself if our mind do not rest in the Creature but be terminated upon God as in the adoration of the Host. See here the admirable effects of the doctrine of divine worship allowed and required in the Roman Church For upon the very same principles that a Papist Worships Images Saints and the Host he may as lawfully worship the Earth the Stars or Men and be no more guilty of Idolatry in one than in the other of them So that if we have no more reason to Worship the person of Christ than they have to adore the host upon their principles we have no more ground to worship Christ than we have to worship any creature in the World § 5. 2. There are not the same motives and grounds to believe the doctrine of Transubstantiation that there are to believe that Christ is God which he affirms but without any appearance of reason And I would gladly know what excellent motives and reasons those are which so advantageously recommend so absurd a doctrine as Transubstantiation is as to make any man think he hath reason to believe it I am sure it gives the greatest advantage to the enemies of Christs Divinity to see these two put together upon equal terms as though no man could have reason to believe Christ to be the Eternal Son of God that did not at the same time swallow the greatest contradictions to sense and reason imaginable But what doth he mean by these motives and grounds to believe The authority of the Roman Church I utterly deny that to be any ground of believing at all and desire with all my heart to see it proved but this is a proper means to believe Transubstantiation by for the ground of believing is as absurd as the doctrine to be believed by it If he means Catholick Tradition let him prove if he can that Transubstantiation was a Doctrine received in the universal Church from our Saviours time and when he pleases I shall joyne issue with him upon that Subject And if he thinks fit to put the negative upon me I will undertake to instance in an Age since the three first Centuries wherein if the most learned Fathers and Bishops yea of Rome it self be to be credited Transubstantiation was not believed But if at last he means Scripture which we acknowledge for our only rule of faith and shall do in spight of all pretences to infallibility either in Church or Tradition I shall appeal even to Bellarmin himself in this
private Spirit is not for all these things are necessarily implyed therein And so for all particular doctrines rejected by us upon this principle we do not make them Negative points of faith but we therefore refuse the belief of them because not contained in our only rule of faith On this account we reject the Popes Supremacy Transubstantiation Infalibility of the present Church in delivering points of faith Purgatory and other fopperies imposed upon the belief of Christians So that the short resolution of our faith is this that we ought to believe nothing as an Article of faith but what God hath revealed and that the compleat revelation of Gods will to us is contained in the Bible and the resolution of our worship is into this principle that God alone is to be worshipped with divine and religious worship and therefore whether they be Saints or Angels Sun Moon and Stars whether the Elements of a Sacrament or of the World whether Crosses and Reliques or Woods and Fountains or any sort of Images in a word no creature whatsoever is to be worshipped with religious worship because that is proper to God alone And if this principle will excuse them from Idolatry I desire him to make the best of it And if he gives no more satisfactory answer hereafter than he hath already done the greatest charity I can use to those of that Church is to wish them repentance which I most heartily do CHAP. III. Of the hindrance of a good Life and Devotion in the Roman Church The doctrines of the Roman Church prejudicial to Piety The Sacrament of Pennance as taught among them destroys the necessity of a good life The doctrine of Purgatory takes away the care of it as appears by the true stating it and comparing that doctrine with Protestants How easie it is according to them for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Purgatory dreadful to none but poor and friendless Sincerity of devotion hindred by prayers in an unknown Tongue The great absurdity of it manifested The effects of our Ancestors devotion had been as great if they had said their prayers in English The language of prayer proved to be no indifferent thing from St. Pauls arguments No universal consent for prayers in an unknown tongue by the confession of their own Writers Of their doctrine of the efficacy of Sacraments that it takes away all necessity of devotion in the minds of the receivers This complained of by Cassander and Arnaud but proved against them to be the doctrine of the Roman Church by the Canons of the Council of Trent The great easiness of getting Grace by their Sacraments Of their discouraging the reading the Scriptures A standing Rule of devotion necessary None so fit to give it as God himself This done by him in the Scriptures All persons therefore concerned to read them The arguments against reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing them in a language known to the people The dangers as great then as ever have been since The greatest prudence of the Roman Church is wholly to forbid the Scriptures being acknowledged by their wisest men to be so contrary to their Interest The confession of the Cardinals at Bononia to that purpose The avowed practice of the Roman Church herein directly contrary to that of the Primitive although the reasons were as great then from the danger of Heresies This confessed by their own Writers § 1. 2. THe second Reason I gave why persons run so great a hazard of their salvation in the communion of the Roman Church was because that Church is guilty of so great corruption of the Christian Religion by opinions and practices which are very apt to hinder a good life which is necessary to salvation But 1. This necessity I said was taken off by their making the Sacrament of Pennance joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation Here he saith That Protestants do make contrition alone which is less sufficient for salvation and our Church allowing confession and absolution which make the Sacrament of Pennance in case of trouble of conscience they being added to contrition cannot make it of a malignant nature To this I answer That contrition alone is not by us made sufficient for salvation For we believe that as no man can be saved without true repentance so that true repentance doth not lye meerly in contrition for sins For godly sorrow in Scripture is said to work repentance to salvation not to be repented of and it cannot be the cause and effect both together Repentance in Scripture implyes a forsaking of sin as it were very easie to prove if it be thought necessary and without this we know not what ground any man hath to hope for the pardon of it although he confess it and be absolved a thousand times over and have remorse in his mind for it when he doth confess it And therefore I had cause to say that they of the Church of Rome destroy the necessity of a good life when they declare a man to be in a state of salvation if he hath a bare contrition for his sins and confess them to the Priest and be absolved by him For to what end should a man put himself to the trouble of mortifying his passions and forsaking his sins if he commits them again he knows a present remedy toties quoties it is but confessing with sorrow and upon absolution he is as whole as if he had not sinned And is it possible to imagine a doctrine that more effectually overthrows the necessity of a good life than this doth I cannot but think if this doctrine were true all the Precepts of Holiness in the Christian Religion were insignificant things But this is a doctrine fitted to make all that are bad and willing to continue so to be their Proselytes when so cheap and easie a way of salvation is believed by them especially if we enquire into the explication of this doctrine among the Doctors of that Church I cannot better express this than in the words of Bishop Taylor whom he deservedly calls an eminent leading man among the Protestants where after he hath mentioned their doctrines about contrition The sequel of all he saith is this that if a man live a wicked life for sixty or eighty years together yet if in the article of his death sooner than which God say they hath not commanded him to repent by being a little sorrowful for his sins then resolving for the present that he will do so no more and though this sorrow hath in it no love of God but only a fear of Hell and a hope that God will pardon him this if the Priest absolves him doth instantly pass him into a state of salvation The Priest with two Fingers and a Thumb can do his work for him only he must be greatly prepared and disposed to receive it greatly we say according to the sense of the Roman Church for he must be
the corrupt lives of those who believe it From hence the trade of saying Masses hath proved so gainful and such multitudes of them have been procured for the benefit of particular persons this being a much easier way of procuring Grace and Salvation than fervent prayer constant endeavours after a Holy Life Mortification Watchfulness and other things we make necessary to enjoy the benefit of what Christ hath done and suffered for us And these things have been complained of by persons of their own communion who have had any zeal for devotion and the practice of true Goodness Cassander although he denyes the doctrine of the efficacy of the Sacraments without the devotion of the receiver to be the received doctrine of the Roman Church yet cannot deny but such a Pharisaical opinion as he calls it had possessed the minds of many of those who did celebrate Masses and were present at them and that too just an occasion was given to those who upbraid them with that opinion because of the multitude of Masses which were celebrated by impure and wicked Priests meerly for gain at which those who are present think they depart from them with a great deal of sanctity although they never once resolve to change their lives but return from thence immediately to their former sins Mons. Arnauld in his Book of frequent communion written upon that occasion confesseth that some in the Roman Church by their doctrine and instructions given to persons did destroy all preparations as unnecessary to the partaking the benefits of the Eucharist and that the worst persons might come without fear to it And that the most required as necessary by them is only the Sacrament of Penance to recover Grace by which he saith they reduce to bare confession and that this by them is not made necessary neither by the more probable opinion but only being at that time free from the guilt of mortal sin It is not to be denyed that Mons Arnauld hath proved sufficiently the other opinion to be most consonant to Scripture and Fathers and the rules of a Christian life but when that is granted the other opinion is yet more agreeable to the doctrine of the Roman Church For although Cassander produce some particular testimonies against it of persons in that Church yet we must appeal for the sense of their Church to the decrees of the Council of Trent which are so contrived as not to condemn the grossest doctrine of the opus operatum For when it doth determine That whosoever shall say that the Sacraments do not confer grace ex opere operato shall be Anathema it cannot be interpreted according to the sense of Cassander and those he mentions that the efficacy of Sacraments doth not depend upon the worth of the Priest For the twelfth Canon relates to that Whosoever shall say that the Minister being in mortal sin although he useth all the essentials to a Sacrament yet doth not celebrate a Sacrament let him be Anathema Those reverend Fathers were not sure so prodigal of their Anathema's to bestow two of them upon the same thing Their meaning then in the eighth Canon must be distinct from the twelfth and if it be so the opus operatum cannot have respect to the worth of the Priest but the devotion of the receiver and it is there opposed to the faith of the divine promise This will appear more plain by the account given of it in the History of that Council After they treated of condemning those who deny Sacraments do confer grace to him that putteth not a barr or do not confess that Grace is contained in the Sacraments and conferred not by vertue of faith but ex opere operato but coming to expound how it is contained and their causality every one did agree that grace is gained by all those actions that excite devotion which proceedeth not from the force of the work it self but from the vertue of devotion which is in the worker and these are said in the Schools to cause grace ex opere operantis There are other actions which cause grace not by the devotion of him that worketh or him that receiveth the work but by vertue of the work it self such are the Christian Sacraments by which grace is received so that there be no barr of mortal sin to exclude it though there be not any devotion So by the work of Baptism grace is given to the Infant whose mind is not moved towards it and to one born a Fool because there is no impediment of sin The Sacrament of Chrisme doth the like and that of extream Vnction though the sick man hath lost his memory But he that hath mortal sin and doth persevere actually or habitually cannot receive grace by reason of the contrariety not because the Sacrament hath not vertue to produce it ex opere operato but because the receiver is not capable being possessed with a contrary quality I dare now appeal to the most indifferent Judge Whether what I objected to them concerning the efficacy of Sacraments whether the minds of the receivers of them be prepared or no were not so far from being a calumâ—y that there is not so much as the least mistake in it if the doctrine of the Council of Trent be embraced by them And any one who shall consider their number of Sacraments and the admirable effects of every one of them may very well wonder how any man among them should want Grace or have any Devotion For Grace being conferred by the Sacraments at so many convenient seasons of his life whether he hath any devotion or no he is sure of Grace if he doth but partake of their Sacraments and need need not trouble himself much about devotion since his work may be done without it Never any doctrine was certainly better contrived for the satisfaction of impenitent sinners than theirs is Our Saviour seems very churlish and severe when he calls sinners to repentance that they may be saved but they have found out a much easier and smoother passage like that of a man in a Boat that may sleep all the while and land safe at last Not so much as the use of reason is required for the effect of that blessed Sacrament of extream Vnction by which like a Ship for a long Voyage a person is pitched and calked for eternity Surely it is the hardest thing that may be for any one to want Grace among them if they do but suffer the Vse of Sacraments upon them and they are the gentlest givers of it imaginable for all they desire of their Patients for Grace is only for them to lye still but if they should chance to be unruly and kick away the Priests or their rites of Chrisme I know not then what may become of them Yet the Church of Rome hath been so indulgent in this case that supposing men under a delirium or wholly insensible if before it be but probable they desired
first spread abroad and never so proper a season to give them caution as then But instead of that they advise them to take heed to the sure word of Prophecy and that they did well therein that the Scriptures were written for their instruction and comfort that being divinely inspired they were able to make them wise unto salvation What did the Apostles never imagine all this while the ill use that might be made of them by men of perverse minds yes they knew it as well as any and did foretell Schismes and Heresies that should be in the Church and saw them in their own dayes and yet poor men wanted that exquisite prudence of the Roman Church to prevent them by so happy an expedient as when they had written Epistles to several Churches to forbid the promiscuous reading of them But it may be it was the awe of the Apostles and their infallible Spirit in interpreting Scripture made this prohibition not so necessary in their own time did the Church then find it necessary to restrain the people after their Decease We have an occasion soon after given wherein to see the opinion of the Church at that time the Church of Corinth fell into a grievous Schisme and opposition to their spiritual Governours upon this Clemens writes his Epistle to them wherein he is so far from forbidding the use of Scripture to them to preserve unity that he bidds them look diligently into the Scriptures which are the true Oracles of the Holy Ghost and afterwards take St. Pauls Epistle into your hands and consider what he saith and commends them very much for being skilled in the Scriptures Beloved saith he ye have known and very well known the holy Scriptures and ye have throughly looked into the Oracles of God therefore call them to mind Which language is as far different from that of the Roman Church as the Church of that Age is from theirs Nay the counterfeit Clemens whom they can make use of upon other occasions is as express in this matter as the true For he perswades private Christians to continual meditation in the Scriptures which he calls the Oracles of Christ and that this is the best imployment of their retirements But we need not use his testimony in this matter nor the old Edition of Ignatius wherein Parents are bid to instruct their Children in the Holy Scriptures nor that saying of Polycarp to the Philippians out of the old Latin Edition I am confident you are well studied in the Scriptures for in the Greek yet preserved he exhorts them to the reading of St. Pauls Epistles that they might be built up in the faith So little did these holy men dream of such a prudent dispensing the Scriptures among them for fear of mischief they might do themselves or others by them Clemens Alexandrinus mentions the reading the Scriptures among Christians before their Meales and Psalmes and Hymns at them and Tertullian mentions the same custome Origen in the Greek Commentaries lately published perswades Christians by all means by attending to Reading Prayer Teaching Meditation therein day and night to lay up in their hearts not only the new Oracles of the Gospell Apostles and Apocalypse but the old ones too of the Law and the Prophets And elsewhere tells his hearers they ought not to be discouraged if they met with difficulties in reading the Scriptures for there was great benefit to be had by them But lest it should be thought he speaks here only of publick reading the Scriptures in his Homilies on Leviticus he speaks plainly that he would not only have them hear the Word of God in publick but to be exercised and meditate therein in their houses night and day For Christ is every where present and therefore they are commanded in the Law to meditate therein upon their journeys and when they sit in their houses and when they lye down and rise up But had not the Church yet experience enough of the mischief of permitting the Scriptures to the people Were there ever greater and more notorious heresies than in those first ages of the Church and those arising from perverting the words and designes of the Scriptures But did the Church yet afterwards grow wiser in the sense of the Roman Church In the time of the four General Councils they had tryal enough of the mischief of Heresies but did the Fathers of the Church forbid the reading the Scriptures on that account No but instead of that they commend the Scriptures to all as the best remedy for all passions of the mind so St. Basil and St. Hierome call it and this latter commends nothing more to the Women he instructed in devotion than constant reading the Scriptures and withall they say that infinite evils do arise from ignorance of the Scriptures from hence most part of Heresies have come from hence a negligent and careless life and unfruitful labours Nay so frequent so earnest and vehement is St. Chrysostome in this matter of recommending the reading of Scriptures that those of the Roman Church have no other way to answer him but by saying he speaks hyperbolically which in plain English is he speaks too much of it But how far different were the opinions of the wise men of the Church in those times from what those have thought who understood the interest of the Roman Church best We may see what the opinion of the latter is by the counsel given to Iulius 3. by the Bishops met at Bononia for that end to give the best advice they could for restoring the dignity of the Roman See that which was the greatest and weightiest of all they said they reserved to the last which was that by all means as little of the Gospel as might be especially in the vulgar tongue be read in the Cities under his jurisdiction and that little which was in the Mass ought to be sufficient neither should it be permitted to any mortal to read more For as long as men were contented with that little all things went well with them but quite otherwise since more was commonly read For this in short is that Book say they which above all others hath raised those Tempests and Whirlewinds which we are almost carryed away with And in truth if any one diligently considers it and compares it with what is done in our Churches will find them very contrary to each other and our very doctrine not only to be different from it but repugnant to it A very fair and ingenuos confession and if self-condemned persons be Hereticks there can be none greater than those of the Roman Church especially the prudential men in it such as these certainly were whom the Pope singled out to give advice in these matters But how different is the wisdom of the Children of this world from that of the Children of Light We have already seen what another kind of judgement
Lord Iesus Christ as man and his Apostles had nothing in proper or in common because they were perfectly poor in this world and that this is perfect Evangelical poverty but the enjoying any thing though in common takes off from the perfection of it and that the Apostles themselves could not without sin have any property in any thing and that it is Heresie to say otherwise therefore the rule of St. Francis prescribing this poverty was that which Christ observed and prescribed to his Apostles and was the same with the Gospel of Christ and therefore whosoever addes to it or takes from it be it the Pope himself he is a Heretick in so doing on which account they condemned Iohn 22. and all the Prelates and Fryers for Heresie who opposed this Doctrine For we are not to imagine a Doctrine so contrary to the beloved interests of the Roman Church should escape opposition nay it was so far from it that it immediately caused a breach in their own order For as Papirius Massonus well observes from Petrarch none hate poverty more than they who profess it most and the Franciscan order had gotten into their hands goodly possessions and built magnificent houses and laid up great provisions of Corn and Wine which these followers of Petrus Iohannis declare against as directly contrary to the rule which they professed being the strictest poverty which this was as like as hypocrisie is to sincerity or St. Francis to Christ. Upon this a great division happens in the Order between the Brethren that followed Petrus Iohannis de Oliva who were called the Spiritual men and the Brethren of the community both parties appeal to Clement 5. Alexander de Alexandriâ General of the Order appears in behalf of the Community and Vbertinus de Casali on the other side But the spiritual Brethren fearing hard usage at Rome and from their other superiours choose new ones to themselves and so make an open Schisme In the Council of Vienna A. D. 1311. a Decree was made to declare the rule of St. Francis which is extant in the Canon Law under the title of Clementines but this by no means effected a cure for the people favouring the dissenters in the Province of Narbon they turned out all the Brethren of the community and took upon themselves new habits to be distinguished from the rest During this heat Gonsalvus General of the Order favouring the stricter Fryers dyed at Paris not without suspicion of poison from the looser Brethren Iohn 22. being Pope resolves to take a severer course with the dissenters and A. D. 1318. imployes the Inquisitours for that end the fruit of which was that they brake out into a more open Schisme and chose one Henricus de Ceva or de Sena for their General and kept their Conventicles as Iohn 22. in his constitution Sancta Romana declares and every day added to their Sect. And the more constitutions he published the greater opposition was made in so much that Michael de Caesena Gul. Ockam and others found out Heresies at last in them and plain contradictions to those of his predecessours especially that of Nicolaus 4. which Bellarmin confesseth cannot in all things be reconciled No fewer than eighteen errours Francisc. Pegna confesseth he was charged with in one constitution to which he answered in another decretal not published in which they found 32 Errours but William Ockam went farther and charged him with no fewer than 90. A goodly number for an infallible Head of the Church in which there ought to be some allowance for humane frailty as Benedict 12. his successour pleaded in behalf of Nicolaus 4. when he answered the objections of the Fraticelli against Iohn 22 as may be seen in Eymericus And his answers are thought so insufficient by Pegna that he saith there are some doubtful and some false which ought not to be passed over without animadversion and therefore solemnly invocates God that he may be able to answer them better and yet this Benedict was accounted a notable Divine for a Pope which made the dissenters saith Pegna hate him the more The substance of his answer which Pegna is so much displeased with is that though Nicolaus 4. had determined contrary to John 22. yet the former definition being contrary to Scripture ought not to stand Thus when Popes fall out the Scripture comes by its own which is to be the standing rule of all Controversies 2. They thought it unlawful upon any occasion to swear this Iohn 22. in his decretal Gloriosam Ecclesiam charges them with and that those were guilty of mortal sin and lyable to punishment who were under the obligation of any Oath whatsoever the same is reported by Wadding and others concerning them 3. The Doctrine of perfection was stiffly maintained by them This Spondanus would have to be one of the opinions of the Beguardi whom he distinguishes from the Beguini but not only Eymericus and Pegna make them to be the same but Iohn 22. in the Extravagant Sancta Romana condemns both together as the title is in Eymericus and in the body of it it appears that they went under divers names in several places being sometimes called Fraticelli sometimes Fratres de poenitentia sometimes Fratres de paupere vitâ sometimes Bizochi sometimes Beghini and sometimes Beguardi which latter seems to be the name that they were known in Germany most by Eymericus speaking of Petrus Olerii and Bononatus two of the Begardi in Spain that were burnt for their Heresie by the Inquisitour and Bishop of Barcelona saith that they held the opinion mentioned before concerning Evangelical poverty which Spondanus thinks peculiar to the Beguini About perfection their opinions were these as Alvarus Pelagius Ioh. Turrecremata Bzovius Spondanus and Raynaldus all agree that a man in this life may attain to so great perfection as to live without sin that a man who hath attained to such a degree he is above ordinances i. e. he need not fast and pray as others do that such as are perfect have the spirit of liberty and are not subject to any humane Ordinances either of Church or State That every intellectual Being hath enough within it self to make it happy or a light within so that it doth not need any external light of Glory in order thereto That to live in the exercise of moral vertues is an argument of a State of imperfection and that one truly perfect is above them From hence they accounted all actions which were designed to satisfie natural inclinations to be indifferent and so looked on unclean mixtures as no sins Alvarus saith he saw one of them who was a German and seemed a very spiritual man in a very mean habit and looking sowrely with tears in his eyes and full of raptures and thought himself a Contemplator and a Taster Names not yet taken up by any Fanaticks among us And to let others understand
among them having now gotten persons to his mind and for fear the Friends of some of his chief confidents in Spain should take them off he offers to go himself and dispatch their business for them In his return to Spain he observes his former course of Preaching and Begging and was followed by such a multitude of people that he was fain to Preach in the Fields where which deserves admiration in so weak and mortified a man though he could not raise his voice yet it was heard distinctly above a quarter of a mile say Orlandinus and Ribadeneira but Maffeius more prudently omits it But he helps us with as good a passage instead of it Ignatius was prevailed upon now by his Disciples to make use of a horse in his journey to Spain which when he was come thither he left to an Hâ—spital which the people looked on with so much reverence that no man durst use him afterwards but as a consecrated horse was preserved in ease and good pasture all his life time At Venice at the time appointed his companions meet him where they debate their voyage to Hierusalem and their custome Orlandinus saith was this in any matter of debate they were to joyne together in Prayer and after seeking God what opinion the most were of that they resolve upon which they observed saith he till the self-denying Ignatius was after much seeking God in their way made the General and then his Will was to rule them after a years stay about Venice their courage being now cooled as to Hierusalem wherein Ignatius and the rest that were yet Lay-men entred into Orders they determine to go to Rome and submit themselves wholly to the Popes pleasure and in the mean time wander about the Countrey Preaching in the Streets and Market places and making use of the Bulks of Shops for their Pulpits and invited the people to hear them saith Maffeius with a loud voice and whirling their Caps over their heads and though few understood them being strangers yet all admired and commended them and no doubt they converted many as their followers have done from the use of Laces and Ribbands All this while since Ignatius began to have any smattering of Learning we read little of his visions and revelations but the time coming near that he hoped for a confirmation of his Order from the Pope now saith Maffeius he began to have them again as frequently as he had at Manresa which in a kind of a religious jest he saith he was wont to call his primitive Church nay he exceeded them for what he now saw being above humane nature cannot be expressed only one Vision did him a great deal of service which was that lying in a trance which was frequent with him as well as Mahomet he saw God the Father commending Ignatius and his Brethren to his Son Iesus bearing his Cross whom he very kindly received and spake these words with a smile to Ignatius I will be favourable to you at Rome which gave him and his companions great comfort At Rome hearing the fame of St. Benedict and his Revelations or remembring them in the Legends he withdraws to the same place Monte Cassino and there it fell out luckily that he might come behind none of them in visions as St. Benedict saw the soul of Germanus go to Heaven so did he in the very same manner the soul of Hozius one of his Society and a little after as he was praying to the Saints he saw Hozius among them all Notwithstanding all this they met with great difficulties at Rome but Pope Paul 3. being throughly satisfied in the main point of their being serviceable to the interest of that Church all other difficulties were soon conquered and the Pope himself became Enthusiastical too and cryed out having read saith Maffeius the first draught of the rules of the Society made by Ignatius The Spirit of the Lord is here and many things to the same purpose But one of the Cardinals to whom the examination of them was committed still opposing the establishing this Order Ignatius flyes to his usual refuges for besides fastings prayers keeping of dayes c. he and his Friends offered three thousand Masses for this end alone and it must be a hard heart indeed that would not yield with so much suppling this Cardinal all of a sudden quite changed his mind and commended the business himself to the Pope and so the Society of Iesus was confirmed by the Popes Bull 3 Octob. A. D. 1540. to the joy of Ignatius his heart and soon after he was made General of the Order which he accepted with as many tears and protestations and intreaties till he plainly saw it was the will of God it must be so as ever any Vsurper took the Government into his hands which he had most eagerly sought after And now let the world judge whether there hath appeared a greater Enthusiast or pretender to revelations than Ignatius was since the dayes of Mahomet and St. Francis Methinks they might be ashamed to upbraid us with the Fanaticism of the Quakers and such persons the chiefest of whom fall very much short of Ignatius in those very things for which they are condemned by us yet any one who compares them would imagine the life of Ignatius had been their great exemplar I know not whether any of that innocent and religious order of Iesuits had any hand in forming this new Society among us as hath been frequently suggested but if one may guesse the Father by the Childs likeness Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Iesuits was at least the Grandfather of the Quakers § 14. Thus I have gone through the most illustrious Orders of the Church of Rome and shewed how they have been founded on Fanaticism and given encouragement thereby unto it It remains now that I consider the way of devotion in greatest request among them and prove that it doth encourage and promote Enthusiasme For this we are to take notice that those of the Church of Rome who have set themselves to the Writing Books of Devotion have with great zeal recommended so mystical and unintelligible a way of devotion as though their design had been only to amuse and confound the minds of devout persons and to prepare them for the most gross Enthusiasme and extravagant illusions of Fancy But this is the fruit of leaving the Scriptures and that most plain and certain way of Religion delivered therein there can be no end of Phantastical modes of devotion and every superstitious Fanatick will be still inventing more or reviving old ones No Laws or Rules publickly allowed can serve their turn they must have something peculiar to themselves to gain a reputation of greater sanctity by and it is hard if they do not light upon some affected phrases unintelligible notions ridiculous or singular postures that they may be sure to charge those with following carnal reason who
daughter Marocia's Son by Pope Sergius came to be Pope himself when as Platina saith it grew to be the custome of Popes to null all that their predecessours had done Were not these goodly heads of the Church the mean time and did not they keep the Church in great Vnity under their agreeable conduct Methinks the providence of God is as much concerned to preserve holiness and peace as faith in the world and were not these excellent instruments for doing it Baronius grants the acts of Stephanus to be such as the most barbarous Nations could not endure to hear of and are too bad to be believed and all the following Age he calls Iron for its rust and barrenness and leaden for its badness and dulness and confesseth that Monsters of impurity then raigned in the Apostolical See that infinite evils sprung from thence and horrible Tragoedies and mischiefs not to be spoken of And yet a very Catholick faith and the Vnity of the Spirit in the bond of peace must be supposed to be there infallibly all this while but if all their faith and unity be of such a kind as was in the 10 Century in the Roman Church I should think Baronius might have said more in admiration of the providence of God in preserving the Catholick faith and Vnity among the Devils in Hell for the Scripture tells us they believe and tremble and our Saviour saith that the Devils Kingdom cannot stand if it be divided against it self and these are clearer and stronger testimonies than can be brought of the faith and Vnity of the Roman Church when such horrid wickedness is acknowledged to have had Dominion in it and that Church was therein unlike the Devils Kingdom that it was divided against it self In the very beginning of this Century Pope Stephen is cast into Prison and there strangled as Baronius proves from his Epitaph and now the Roman faction prevailing they make one Romanus Pope the first and only thing he did was to condemn all that Stephen had done as Platina Onuphrius and Ciacconius all agree but he continued not much above four months after him Theodorus who held out about twenty dayes and followed the steps of Romanus to him succeeded Iohn 10. as Platina calls him of the same faction who set all Formosus his Acts to rights again condemning all that Stephen had done in a Council at Ravenna whither he was driven by the prevalency of the faction at Rome against him where in the presence of seventy four Bishops the Acts of the Council under Stephen were burnt in which the Ordinations of Formosus were nulled and Sergius Benedictus and Marinus were Anathematized for being instruments in the Acts against Formosus The next Pope Benedict escapes without any thing but a dull Epitaph but Leo his successour had not been above forty days in the place but he is cast into Prison by one of his servants who is made Pope in his place and seven months after he is served the same way by Sergius who now at last recovered the Popedome and the greatest thing he did was to condemn Formosus again and all who had appeared for him so that now as Sigebert saith nothing was talked of so much as ordinations and exordinations and superordinations by the contrary Acts of these Popes to one another Baronius confesseth this Sergius to have been a man of a most infamous and dissolute life after his death Theodora was not at rest till she had gotten her Gallant to be Pope under the name of Iohn 11. and what manner of Cardinals saith Baronius may we imagine such a Pope would make But Marozia her daughter was not so well pleased with him for by her order his Brother was killed in his presence and he put into prison and there smothered After him saith Luitprandus her own Son by Pope Sergius is made Pope who was cast into Prison by his Brother Albericus who being not pleased with Stephen who followed him he was set upon and so wounded and deformed thereby that he durst not let his face be seen and the seditions saith Platina continued so high in his time that he could do no great thing At last Alberic's Son called Octavianus got possession of the See under the name of Iohn 13. or 12. as oâ—hers besides Platina call him who was such a Monster for all wickedness that Otho the Emperour was called into Italy to displace him who called a Council wherein he was accused for ordaining a Deacon in a Stable and making a Bishop of ten years of age but these were small faults to his Adulteries Sacriledge Cruelties drinking healths to the Devil and at Dice calling upon the Devils for help When these accusations were sent to him from the Council he only threatned to excommunicate them all if they chose another Pope against him but they not regarding his threatning depose him and choose Leo 8. in his place Here Baronius storms unreasonably that a Council should take upon it to depose a Pope though so abominably bad as he confesseth this man to have been and makes them guilty of an intolerable Errour and Heresie in so doing because it implyes their believing that the power of the Keys did depend on the worth of the person and therefore he detests Leo as a Schismatical Pope And to make sure of a Schisme after the infamous death of Iohn 13. being killed in the act of Adultery the opposite faction in Rome chose Benedict 5. to succeed him who was carried away prisoner by Otho into Germany but before his death Iohn 13. called a Council wherein he nulled all the Acts of the other Council and pronounced them Schismaticks and decreed that all that were ordained by them must be re-ordained Is not here now a most admirable Vnity in the Roman Church After Leo another Iohn is chosen by the Emperours party but as Platina saith it being now grown customary to depose Popes they drive him away by seditions against him being first imprisoned by Rotfredus and then expelled the City But they suffered sufficiently for it by the severity of Otho against them The next Pope Benedict 6. was cast into Prison by the other faction and there strangled or famished Iohn 14. came to his end after the same manner dying in Prison by the faction of Ferrucius the Father of Boniface 7. who was driven away from Rome after his being made Pope after whom Benedict 7. was set up and Iohn succeeding him Boniface's faction recovering again he was for a few months restored to the Popedome Against Greg. 5. the faction of Crescentius set up one Ioh. 17. who by the power of the Emperour was deprived of his eyes and the Popedome together and a little after of his life But these factions in Rome did not end with this Century for in the next A. D. 1044 we find a new Schism breaking out on the account of them We are contented
all of a mind and it is not necessary to the Unity of the Church that they should be but they have the only way of composing differences and they do not differ in matters of faith from each other and their differences lye only in their Schools and do not disturb the peace of the Church This is the utmost I can find their best wits plead for the Vnity of the Roman Church and if these be sufficient I believe they and we will be proved to be as much at Unity as they are among themselves 1. They say the Vnity of the Church doth not lye in actual Agreement of the members of it in matters of Doctrine but in having the best means to compose differences and to preserve consent which is submission to the Popes Authority So Gregory de Valentiâ explains the Vnity of their Church for actual consent he grants may be in other Churches as much as theirs and there is nothing singular or peculiar attributed to their Church supposing they were all of a mind which it is plain they are not but therein saith he lyes the Vnity of their Church that they all acknowledge one Head in whose judgement they acquiesce and therefore they have no more to do but to know what the Pope determines If this be all their Unity we have greater than they for we have a more certain way of ending Controversies than they have which I prove by an argument like to one in great request among them when they go about to perswade weak persons to their Religion viz. that it must needs be safer to be in that Religion wherein both parties agree a man may be saved than in that where one side denies a possibility of salvation so say I here that must be a safer way for Unity which both parties agree in to be infallible than that which one side absolutely denyes to be so but both parties agree the Scriptures to be infallible and all Protestants deny the Pope to be infallible therefore ours is the more certain way for Vnity But this is not all for it is far from being agreed among themselves that the Pope is infallible it being utterly denyed by some among them and the asserting it accounted Heresie as is evident in some late Books written to that purpose in France and England What excellent means of Vnity then is this among them which it is accounted by some no less than Heresie to assert § 13. But supposing they should yield the Pope that submission which they deny to be due to him yet is his definition so much more certain way of ending Controversies than the Scriptures Let them name one Controversie that hath been ended in their Church meerly by the Popes Decrees so as the opposite party hath declared that they believed contrary to what they believed before on the account of the Popes definition We have many instances to the contrary wherein controversies have been heightened and increased by their interposing but none concluded by them Do they say the Scripture can be no means of Vnity because of the various senses which have been put upon it and have they no wayes to evade the Popes definitions Yes so many that his Authority in truth signifies nothing any farther than they agree that the upholding it tends to their common interest But when onces he comes to cross the interest of any party if they do not in plain terms defie him yet they find out more civil wayes of making his Definitions of no force Either they say the Decree was procured by fraud and the Pope made it by mis-information which is the common way or he did not define it as a matter of faith sitting in Cathedrâ or the sense of his definition is quite otherwise than their Adversaries understand it or supposing that be the sense the Pope is never to be supposed to define any thing contrary to the Scriptures and Fathers and ancient Canons Of all which it were no difficult task to give late and particular instances but no one who is acquainted with the history of that Church can be ignorant of them and the late proceedings in the point of the five Propositions are a sufficient evidence of these things to any one who reads them For when was there a Fairer occasion given to the Pope to shew his Authority for preservation of the Churches unity than at that time when the matter of the five Propositions was under debate at Rome The same controversie was now revived which had disturbed their Church so often and so much before In the time of Clement 8. the heats were so great between the Iesuits and Dominicans that the Pope thought it necessary for the peace of the Church to put an end to them to that end he appointed Congregations for several years to discuss those points that he might come to a resolution in them This Pope at first was strangely prepossest by the arts of the Iesuits against the Dominicans but sending for the General of the Dominicans he told him what sad apprehensions he had concerning the peace of the Church by reason of the disputes between the Iesuits and them and therefore charges him that those of his Order should no longer molest the Iesuits about these things to whom he replyed that he assured him with as great Protestation as he was able that it was no meer Scholastical dispute between them but it was the cause of faith that was concerned which he discoursed largely upon to the Pope and made such impressions upon him that the Dominicans verily believe that had that Pope lived to the Vespers of Pentecost that year he dyed in March he had published a Bull against the Iesuits in presence of the Colledge of Cardinals and created F. Lemos Cardinal After his death the congregations were continued in the time of Paul 5. but at last were broken up without any decision at all If the Popes determination be such an absolute Instrument of peace in the Church it is the strangest thing in the world it should be made so little use of in such cases where they all acknowledge it would be of infinite advantage to their Church to have an issue put to such troublesome controversies as these were But they know well enough that the Popes Authority is the more esteemed the less it is used and that it hath alwayes been very hazardous to determine where there have been considerable parties on both sides for fear the condemned party should renounce his Authority or speak plainer truths than they are willing to hear And therefore it was well observed by Mons. S. Amour that they are very jealeus at Rome of maintaining the Authority of the decrees which issue from thence and that this consideration obliges the maker of them to look very well to the compliance and facility that may be expected in their execution before they pass any at all Which is a most certain argument they dare
all wise men ever did and will do to the worlds end 4. I proved they made faith uncertain by making the Churches power to extend to the making new articles of faith This he grants to be to the purpose if it were true but he saith the Church never owned any such power in her General Councils which doth not hinder but that the Heads of their Church have pretended to it and in case it be disputable among them whether the Pope be not infallible that unavoidably leaves faith at uncertainties Yet he yields what I contend for which is that it is in the Churches Power to make that necessary to be believed which was not so before for whether it be by inventing new Articles or declaring more explicitely the Truths not contained in Scripture and Tradition it is all one to my purpose as long as men might be saved without believing them before and cannot afterwards which is to make the conditions of salvation mutable according to the pleasure of the Church which is the greatest inconveniency of inventing new doctrines 5. I shewed they made faith uncertain by pretending to infallibility in determining Controversies and yet not using it to determine those which are on foot among themselves The force of the argument did not lye in this as he imagines as though faith could not be certain unless all controversies were determined which was far from my thoughts but that pretending there can be no faith without infallibility in their Church to end Controversies they should give such great occasion to suspect that they did not believe themselves by imploying that Infallibility in ending the great Controversies among themselves of which I have spoken already and to this he gives no answer at all Thus much in Vindication of the third Argument I made use of to prove that all those who are in the Communion of the Roman Church do run so great a hazard of their salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace or continue in it § 15. I now come to the third answer to the first Question which was that a Protestant leaving the Communion of our Church doth incurre a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the communion of the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible Ignorance and therefore cannot equally be saved with such a one Three things he objects against this Answer 1. That this makes them both damned though unequally because the Converted Catholick more deeply than he that was bred so 2. That this reflects as much upon St. Austin as them who rejected the Communion of the Manichees and embraced that of the Church of Rome upon their grounds 3. That it is contrary to our distinction of points fundamental and not fundamental To which I Reply 1. That the design of my Answer was not to pass the sentence of damnation on all who dye in the communion of the Roman Church but to shew that they who forsook a better Church for it do incurre greater guils than those who are alwayes bred up in it and live and dye in the belief of its being the true Church and therefore are not in an equal capacity of salvation with them I shall make my meaning more plain by a parallel Instance or two many in the Church of Rome have asserted the possibility of the Salvation of Heathens though some Bigots have denyed it to Protestants suppose this question were put concerning two persons Whether a Christian having the same motives to become a Heathen which one bred and born and well grounded in Heathenism hath to remain in it may not equally be saved in the profession of it and a third person should answer that a Christian leaving the communion of the Christian Church doth incurre a greater guilt than one who was bred up in Heathenism and continues therein by invincible Ignorance doth this answer imply that they must both be damned though equally or rather doth it not yield a greater possibility of salvation to one than to the other Or suppose to come nearer our case the question were put concerning one that revolted from the Church of Iudah to the ten Tribes which were guilty of Idolatry though not of the highest kind whether he were equally capable of salvation with one who was bred up in the communion of the Church of Israel all his dayes I should make no question to pronounce his condition more dangerous than the other yet not therein damn them both but only imply that it was much harder for to escape than the other For he that was bred up in the Church of Israel believing it was the true God he served and in a right manner and looking on the Church of Iudah as a Schismatical Church and seeing the greater number of Tribes on their side and wanting that instruction which was in the Church of Iudah might in the sincerity of his heart serve God in a false way and pray to him to pardon all his errours and corruptions and have a general repentance of all sins though not particularly convinced of the Idolatry of the ten Tribes I dare not say but God will accept of such a one that thus fears God and works Righteousness in the simplicity of his heart but I cannot say the same of one who revolts from Iudah where the true God was worshipped in a true manner where he had sufficient means of instruction and either wilful Ignorance or temporal ends or unreasonable prejudices makes him deliberately choose a worse and more impure Church before a better for that very sin makes his case much more dangerous than the other Our business is not to enquire into the salvation or damnation of any particular persons for that depends upon so many circumstances as to the aggravation or extenuation of their faults the nature and sincerity of their repentance the integrity and simplicity of their minds which none but God himself can know but to find out the truest way to salvation and to reject whatever Church requires that which is in it self sinful for though God may pardon those who live in it in the simplicity of their minds yet their hopes lying in their Ignorance and repentance none who have a care of their souls dare venture themselves in so hazardous a state Setting aside then the consideration of the danger common to both I say the case of a Revolter from us to the Church of Rome is much worse than of one who was alwayes bred up in it because he might far more easily understand the danger he runs into and wilfull Ignorance only keeps him from it and he doth upon deliberation choose a state of infinite hazard before one of the greatest safety 2. This doth not reflect on St. Austin or the Church in his time which was as far different from theirs as the Churches of Iudah and Israel were from each other neither can it destroy the distinction of Fundamentals and not Fundamentals
10. Conciâ—or Antiq. Galliae sâ—pplement p. 78. A. D. 756. Papir Masson Annales Franc. l. 2. p. 87. Sigon de reg Ital. l. 3. A. 754. Sermond Concil Tom. 2. p. 12. Blond decad 2. l. 1. Platin. in Steph. 2. Adelmus in Franc. Annal ad A. 755. Bâ—ondus ib. Platina in Stephan 2. Platina in Stephan 3. De translat Imp. Rom. l. 1. c. 4. Platin. in Steph. 2. Blond decad 2. lib. 1. The disturbances made by Popes in the new Empire Annales Eccles. ad A. D. 833. P. Aemilius in hist or Franc. p. 54. Nithard hist. l. 1. à Petr P'thae ed. in Annal. Franc. Vita Ludovici Pii à Pithaeo ib. p. 245. Papir Masson in vit Greg. 4. Sigeberti Chron. A D. 832. Hincmar Rhemens Epistol p. 577. ed. Cord. Of the quarrels of Greg. 7. with the Emperour and other Christian Princes Urspergens Chronic. p. 226. marg Otto Frising l. 6. c. 32. Petr. Damiani Epistol l. 1. câ— 16. L. 1. Epist. ad Card. Ep. 8. Sigonius de regno Italico l. 9. in Hen. 3. A. D. 1074. Lambert Schasnabuâ—g histor German A. D. 1074. p. 201 Sigebert Gembloc Chron. A. 1074. Matt. Paris in Gul. 1. Aventin Annal. Boior l. 5. p. 564. Constitut. Imperial Tom 1. p. 238. Baron Annales Eccles. A. D. 1077. â— 40. Baron ad A. 1074. n. 10. Ad A. D. 1080. n. 8. 14. N. 1â— Helmoldi Chron. Slavorum l. 1. cap. 29. Abbas Ursperae ad A. D. 1080. Sigebert Chron. ad A. D. 1085. Florent Wigorn. ad A. 1084. Matt. Paris Histor. Anglic. A. 1087. Aventin Annal. Boior l. 5. p. 581. Sentent Cardin Baronii super excomun Venet. Sigon de regno Ital. l. 9. ad A. 1084. Baron Annal ad A. D. 1073. n. 65. Id. ad A. 1074 n. 53. Id. ib. n. 32. Id. ad A. 1080. n. 48. Id. A. 1078. n. 15. Mart. Cromer de gestis Polon l. 4. ad sin Baron ad A. D. 1074. n. 5. Id. ad A. D. 1080. n. 45. Id. A. 1079. n. 20. Eadvier prefat ad hist. Novorum Of the quarrels of his Successours Onuphrius in vit Greg 7. Sicebrct Gâ—mblac ad A. D. 1088. Helmold Chron. Slav. l. 1. c 30. Urspergens Cirron p. 235. Baron Annales ad A. D. 1088. n. 3. Aventin Annal. Boior l. 5. p. 590. Baron A. D. 1093. n. 3. Sigon de regno Ital. l. 9. A. 1093. Bar. ad A. D. 1095. n. 8. Constitut. Imper. Tom. 1. p. 247. Abbas Ursperg Chron. p. 241. Ursperg ib. Baron ad A. D. 1105. n. 4. Avent Annalâ—s Boior l. 5. p. 597. Constitut. Impâ—r Tom. 3. p. 318. Baron ad A. 1106. n. 2. c. Id ad A. D. 1105. n. 6. Id ad A. D. 1106 n. 14. Aventin Annal Boior l. 5. p. 562. Siceberti Chronic. ad A. D. 1074. Of the Schisms in the Roman Church Bellarm. de rotis Eccles. l. 4 c. 10 De Eccles. milâ—t l 3 c. 5. Onuphr Annot in Plat. vit Formosi Victorel add ad ciaâ—coâ— de vit Pontif Baron Annal ad A. D. 897 n. 2 3. Papir Masson de Episcop u. b. l. 3. p. 151. Morinus de Sacris Eccles ordinat par 2 p. 348. Baron Annal ad A D. 897. n. 8 9. Platina in vit Steph. 6. Ad. A. D. 900. n. 1. N. 6. Baron A. 908. n. 3. A. D. 912. n. 14. A. D. 928. n. 2. Luitprand hist. l. 3. cap. 12. Baron ad A. 933. n. 1. Baron A. D. 963. n. 15. N. 27 28 c. N. 33. A. 964. n 7. Baron An ad A. D. 1052. n. 6. Aâ—hors Ciaccoa vit Pontif in Clem. 7. Of the differences in the Roman Church about matters of Government Gregor l. 4. Epist. 43. Carolâ— M. Capitular l. 5. n. 25. Bernard Epist. 42 ad Hen. Senon De consider l. 3. c. 4 Ivo Carâ—ot Ep 29. 276. Petri Blesens Ep. 68. De periculis noviss temporum p. 18. Cap. 2. Cap. 3. Cap. 4. Cap. 5. Cap. 9. Cap. 10. Cap. 11. Cap. 12. Cap. 13. Cap. 14. Of the insufficiency of the Popes authority for ending this Controversie Clementin l. 3. c. 2. Gregor decret Epistol l 5. n. 31. c. 16 17. Matth. Paris A. D. 1235. p. 419. Petrus de Vineis epistol lib. 1. ep 37. Seculum quintum Universit Paris p. 271. D'attichy hist. Cardinal Tom 1. vit nibaldi Rainald ad A. D. 1254. n. 73. Boulay histor universit Paris tom 3. p. 176. Id. p. 462. Meyer Annales Flandr l. 10. ad A. D. 1285. Extravagant commun l. 5. tit 7. c. 1. Wadding Annal. Minorum ad A. D. 1357. Rich. Armach Defensio Curat Bulae hist. universit Paris tom 4. p. 337. Walsingham hist. Angl. in Adv. 3. p. 173. Ioh. Wickliffe against the Orders of Fryers c. 10. p. 28. Of the differences between the regulars and seculars in England Watsons Reply to Parsons his Libel p. 2. Petri Aurelii opera tom 1. p. 62. Of the Jesuits particular opposition to Bishops and their Authority Moral practice of the Jesuits p. 328. Bull. Rom. Tom. 2. p. 361. Bull. 1. Greg. 13. Collection of Tract p. 11. S. Amours Iournal p. 5. ch 15. Index Alex A.D. 1658. S. Amours Iournal p. 7. ch 5. Of their differences in matters of doctrine Greg. de Valent. Analys fidâ—i l. 6. c. 4. 9. The insufficiency of the Popes Authority for ending these differences S. Amours Iournal p. 3. ch 10. Iournal p. 6. ch 26. P. 3. ch 8. Iournal p. 1. ch 9. Iournal p. 6. ch 3. 〈◊〉 6. ch◠〈◊〉 The insufficiency of Councils to end Controversies History of the Council of Trent l. 2. p. 138. P. 149. Their differences are in matters of faith Their differences not confined to their Schools Scot. in 3. lib. sent dist 3. q. 1. n. 10. Apolog. pâ—o vitâ morte Ioh. Dâ—ns Scoti Walsinâ—ham hist. circa A. D. 1389. Sext. Seculum Universit Paris p. 618. V. Meyâ—r Aâ—â—al Flaâ—dr l. 14. A. 1388. Cavelli Rosar B. Mariae test 14. sâ—cul Wadding Legatio de Concept Sect. 3. tract 12. S. 1. Moral practice of the Jesuits pag. 383. The misinterpreting Scripture doth not hinder its being a rule of faith S. August tract 18. in Iob. cap. 5. Of their superstitious observations Of Indulgences The practice of Indulgences Baron ad A. D. 1084. n. 15. Grâ—g 7. l 6. Ep. 15. Leo Casin hist. l. 3. c. 71. Gul. Tyrius l. 1. hist. Orient Will. Malms l. 4. c. 2. Ordâ—r Vitalis hist. Ecclâ—s ad A. D. 1095. Bernard Exhort ad milit tâ—mpli c. 5. Morinus de Sacram Poenit. l. 10. c. 23. cap. 23. Baron ad A. D. 1118. n. 31. Id. ad A D. 1127. n. 5. Id. ad A D 1177. n. 8. Id. ad A D. 1177. n. 76. Ad A. D. 1179. n. 7. Bzov. ad A. D. 1219. 3. Id. A. D. 1239. n 8. Ad A. D. 1208. n. 5. Morinus de Poenitent l. 10. c. 20. Baron ad A. D. 847. Extravag Commun l. 5. tit 9. c. 1. Bzov. ad A. D. 1300. n 1. Bell. de Iâ—dâ—l l. 1. c. 9. Gobelin Peâ—soâ—a Cosâ—odrâ—aet 6. c. 86. Of Iâ—dâ—lgences at Rome Hen. Foulis preface to the History of Romish usurpations Bell. de Indulg l. 2. c. 20. On phrius de 7. urbis Ecclesâ—â—s Caesar Raspon de Basilicâ Lateraâ—ensi l. 2. c. 14. p. 204. Raspon de Basil. â—ater l 4. c. 19. Of Indulgences for saying some prayers Horae B. V. Mariae sâ—cundum usum Sarum p. 38. Pag. 42. P. 45. P. 50. P. 54. P. 58. P. 61. P. 66. P. 72. What opinion hath been had of Indulgences in the Roman Church Durand in sentent l. 4. dist 20. q. 3. Ioh. Major in sent l. 4. dist 20. Cajetan opusc de Indulgent init Soto in sent l. 4. dist 20. Greg. de Valent. de Indulg c 4. Estius in sent l. 4. dist 20 â— 2. Morinus de paenitent l. 10 c. 20. â— 9. Râ—ff c. Luther art 18. Polyd. Vâ—rgil de Iavent l. 8. c. 1. Alâ—hons à Castro adveâ—s haeres l. 8. v. Indulg Alphons l. 1. c. 12. Bellar. de amâ—ssâ—gratiae l. 6. c. 3. resp ad â—bj 6. Aquin. sâ—pplement sum q. 25. art 2. Bonavent in sent l. 4. dist 20. q. 6. Greg. de Valent. de Indulg c. 2. Apud Morin l. 10. c. 20. n. 5. Ib. n. 7. Guil. Altissiodor sum l. 4. tract 6. c. 9. Morin l. 10. c. 21. n. 3 Greg. de Valent. de Indulg c. 2. Albert. M. in sent l. 4. dist 20. art 17. Petrarch ep 5. Gobâ—l Personaâ—aet 6. c. 68. Paul Largii Chronic. Citizens ad A. D. 1395. Uâ—spâ—rg Chron. p. 307. Platina in Bonif. 9. Ursperg Chron. p. 322. Gerson de Indulg coâ—sid 8. Bull. Rom. Tom. 1. Sixt. 4. Coâ—st 17. Sâ—rrar Rerum Moâ—untiac l. 1. c. 34. Wesseli Groning oper p. 867 c. Iac. Angular in ep Wesseli Bell. de Indulg l. 1. c. 12. Of Bellarmins prudent Christian The absurdity of the doctrine of Indulgences and the Churches Treasure Cassander in consult art 12. Barns Cathol Rom. Pacific S. 9. White de medio anim statudem 26. Clem. 8. const 58. To. 3. Bull. Uâ—ban 8. const 16. To. 4. The tendency of Indulgences to hinder devotion Dâ—â—and in sentent l. 4. dist 20. q. 4. Polyd virg de invent rer l. 8. c. 1. Onus Eccâ—â— c. 14. 8. 28. Centum gravamina act 3. 4. Of communion in one kind Vindication of Arch-Bishop Land Part. 3. ch 3. 8. 14. 15. 16. 17. Of the Popes power of dispensing The ill consequence of asserting marriage in a Priest to be worse than Fornication 1 Cor. 7. 9. Cyprian ep 62. August de San. Virginit 1. c. 34. Epiph. c. haer 61. Hieronym ep adv demetriad Jewels defense of the Apology part 2. p. 174. â— Tim. 5. 14. v. 9. Bibliotheca furis Canoniâ—i p. 317. August de bono viduitat c. 9. 10. 11. Of the uncertainty of faith in the Roman Church Vindication of Arch-Bishop Laud part 1. ch 5. 6. 7. 8 9. c. 7. sect 9. The case of a revolter and a bred Papist compared The motives of the Roman Church considered Preface to the second part of his dissuasive Polemical discourses p 705. c. The saith of Protestants reduced to Principles