it if thy use the means by him appointed to come unto a right understanding of it They suppose that what is not taught therein or not taught so clearly as that men who humbly and heartily seek unto him may know his mind therein as to what he requireth of them cannot possibly be the necessary and indispensable Duty of any one to perform They suppose that it is the Duty of every man to search the Scriptures with all diligence by the help and assistance of the means that God hath appointed in his Church to come to the knowledg of his mind and will in all things concerning their Faith and Obedience and firmly to believe and adhere unto what they find revealed by him And they moreover suppose that those who deny any of these Suppositions are therein and so farre as they do so injurious to the Grace Wisedem Love and Care of God towards his Church to the Honour and perfection of the Scripture the Comfort and establishment of the Souls of men leaving them no assured Principles to build their Faith and Salvation upon Now from these Suppositions I hope you see that it will unavoidably follow that the Scripture is able every way to effect that which you deny unto it a sufficiency for For where I pray you lyes its defect I am afraid from the next part of your Question Has it ever done it that you run upon a great mistake The defect that follows the failings and miscarriages of men you would have imputed unto the want of sufficiency in the Scripture But wee cannot allow you herein The Scripture in its place and in that kind of Cause which it is is as sufficient to settle men all men in the Truth as the Sunne is to give light to all men to see by But the Sunne that giveth light doth not give eyes also The Scripture doth its work as a Morall Rule which men are not necessitated or compelled to attend unto or follow And if through their neglect of it or not attendance unto it or disability to discern the mind and will of God in it whether proceeding from their naturall impotency and blindness in their laps'd condition or some evil habit of mind contracted by their giving admission unto corrupt prejudices and Traditionall Principles the work be not effected this is no impeachment of the Scriptures sufficiency but a manifestation of their weakness and folly Besides all that unity in faith that hath been at any time or is in the world according to the mind of God every Decision that hath been made at any time of any difference in or about Religion in a right way and order hath been by the Scripture which God hath sanctified unto those ends and purposes And it is impossible that the miscarriages or defects of men can reflect the least blame upon it or make it esteemed insufficient for the end now enquired after The pursuit then of your Enquiry which now you insist upon is in part vain in part already answered In vain it is that you enquire whether the written Word can settle any man in a way that neither himself nor present adherents nor future Generations shall question For our enquiry is not after what may be or what shall be but what ought to be It is able to settle a man in a way that none ought to question unto the worlds end So it setled the first Christians But to secure us that none shall ever question the way whereinto it leads us that it is not designed for nor is it either needfull or possible that it should be so The Orall preaching of the Sonne of God and of his Apostles did not so secure them whom they taught The way that professed was every where questioned contradicted spoken against and many after the profession of it again renounced it And I wonder what feat you have to settle any one in a way that shall never be questioned The Authority of your Pope and Church will not do it Themselves are things as highly questioned and disputed about as any thing that was ever named with reference unto Religion If you shall say But yet they ought not to be so questioned and it is the fault of men that they are so You may well spare me the labour of answering your Question seeing you have done it your self And whereas you adde or with as much probability dissent from it either totally or in part as himself first set it when the very preceding words do not speak of a mans own setting but of the Scriptures setling the man only embracing what that setleth and determineth It is answered already that what is so setled by the Scripture and received as setled cannot justly be questioned by any And you insinuate a most irrationall Supposition on which your Assertion is built namely that Errour may have as much probability as Truth For I suppose you will grant that what is setled by the Scripture is true and therefore that which dissents from it must needs be an errour which that it may be as probable indeed as Truth for we speak not of appearances which have all their strength from our weaknesses is a new notion which may well be added to your many other of the like rarity and evidence But why is not the Scripture able to settle men in unquestionable Truth When the people of old doubted about the wayes of God wherein they ought to walk himself sends them to the Law and to the Testimony for their instruction and settlement Isa 8. 20. And we think the counsell of him who cannot deceive nor be deceived is to be hearkned unto as well as his command to be obeyed Our Saviour assures us that if men will not hear Moses and the Prophets and take direction from them for those wayes wherein they may please God they will not do it whatsoever they pretend from any other means which they rather approve of Luk. 16. 29 31. Yea and when the great Fundamental of Christian Religion concerning the Person of the Messiah was in question he sends men for their settlement unto the Scriptures Joh. 5. 39. And we suppose that that which is sufficient to settle us in the foundation is so to confirm us also in the whole superstructure Especially considering that it is able to make the man of God perfect and to be thoroughly furnished unto all good works 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. What more is required unto the settlement of any one in Religion wee know not nor what can rationally stand in competition with the Scripture to this purpose seeing that is expresly commended unto us for it by the Holy Ghost other wayes are built on the conjectures of men Yea the Assurance which we may have hereby is preferred by Peter before that which any may have by an immediate voyce from Heaven 2 Pet. 1. 19. And is it not an unreasonable thing now for you to come and tell us that the Scripture is not sufficient
and compleat that is sufficient to enable a man to know so much of God his Mind and Will and to direct him so in his Worship and Obedience unto him as that he may please him here and come to the fruition of him hereafter it must needs become an evident means of deceiving him and ruining him and that to all eternity And the least fear of any such event overthrows all the notions which he had before entertained of those blessed Properties of the Divine Nature and so consequently disposeth him unto Atheism For if a man hath once received the Scripture as the Word of God and that given unto him to be his guide unto Heaven by God himself if one shall come to him and tell him Yea but it is not a perfect Guide but though you should attend sincerely to all the Directions that it gives you yet you may come short of your Duty and Expectation you may neither please God here nor come to the fruition of Him hereafter In case he should assent unto this suggestion can he entertain any other thoughts of God but such as our first Parents did when by attendance unto the false insinuations of the old Serpent they cast off his Soveraignty and their dependance on him Neither can you relieve him against such thoughts by your pretended Traditionall supply seeing it will still be impossible for him to look on this Revelation of the Will of God as imperfect and insufficient for the End for which it plainly professeth its self to be given forth by him without some intrenchment on those notions of his Nature which he had before received For it will presently occurr unto him that seeing this way of revealing himself for the Ends mentioned is good and approved of Himself so to be if he hath not made it compleat for that end it was either because he could not and where then is his Wisdome or because he would not and where then is his Love Care and Goodness and seeing he saith he hath done what you would have him to believe that he hath not done where is his Truth and Veracity Certainly a man that seriously ponders what he hath to do and knows the vanity of an irrationall fanatical Credo will conclude that either the Scripture is to be received as Perfect or not to be received at all 2. Protestants conclude hence That the Scripture given of God for this purpose is intelligible unto men using the means by God appointed to come to the understanding of his Mind and Will therein I know many of your way are pleased grievously to mistake our intention in this Infêrence and Conclusion Sometimes they would impose upon us to say that All places of Scripture all words and sentences in it are plain and of an obvious sense and easie to be understood And yet this you know or may know if you please and I am sure ought to know before you talk of these things with us that we absolutely deny It is one thing to say that all necessary Truth is plainly and clearly revealed in the Scripture which we do say and another that every text and passage in the Scripture is plain and easie to be understood which we do not say nor ever thought as confessing that to say so were to contradict our own experience and that of the Disciples of Christ in all ages Sometimes you faign as though we asserted all the things that are revealed in the Scripture to be plain and obvious to every mans understanding whereas we acknowledge that the things themselves revealed are many of them mysterious surpassing the comprehension of any man in this world and only maintain that the propositions wherein the Revelation of them is made are plain and intelligible unto them that use the means appointed of God to come to a right understanding of them And sometimes you would commit this with another Principle of ours whereby we assert that the supernaturall Light of Grace to be wrought in our hearts by the Holy Ghost is necessary to give unto us a saving perception and understanding of the Mind of God in the Scripture for what needs such speciall assistance in so plain a matter as though the asserting of perspicuity in the object made ability to discern in the subject altogether unnecessary Or that he who affirms the Sun to give light doth at the same time affirm also that men have no need of eyes to see it withall Besides we know there is a vast difference between a notionall speculative apprehension and perception of the meaning and Truth of the Propositions contained in the Scripture which we acknowledge that every reasonable unprejudiced Person may attain unto and a gracious saving spirituall perception of them and assent unto them with faith Divine and Supernatural and this we say is the especiall work of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of the Elect. And I know not how many other exceptions you make to keep your selves from a right understanding of our intention in this Inference but as your self elsewhere learnedly observes who so blind as he that will not see I shall therefore once more that we may proceed declare unto you what it is that we intend in this Assertion It is namely that the things which are revealed in the Scripture to the end that by the belief of them and obedience unto them we may please God are so proposed and declared that a man any man free from prejudices and temptations in and by the use of the means appointed him of God for that purpose may come to the understanding and that infallibly of all that God would have him know or do in Religion there being no defect or hinderance in the Scripture or manner of its revealing things necessary that should obstruct him therein What are the means appointed of God for this purpose we do not now enquire but shall anon declare What defect blindness or darkness there is or may be in and upon the minds of men in their depraved lapsed Condition what disadvantages they may be cast under by their prejudices Traditions negligences sins and prophaneness belongs not unto our present disquisition That which we assert concerns meerly the manner of the proposall of the Truths to be believed which are revealed in the Scripture and this we say is such as that there is no impossibility no nor great difficulty but that a man may come to the right understanding of them not as to the comprehension of the things themselves but the perception of the sense of the Propositions wherein they are expressed And this Assertion of ours is as the former grounded on the Scripture its self See if you please Deut. 30. 11. Psal. 1. 19. 9. and 119. 105. Prov. 6. 22. 2 Cor. 4. 3. 2 Pet. 19. And to deny it is to pluck up all Religion by the roots and to turn men loose unto Scepticism Libertinism and Atheism and that with such an horrible reproach unto God
it partly in a repetition in other words of what you had before insisted on The former I shall no further endeavour to disturb your contentment in It is a common error Neque est quisquam Quem non in aliquare videre Suffenum Possis I am not your Rivall in the admiration of it and shall therefore leave you quietly in the embracements of your Darling And for the latter we have had enough of it already and so by this time I hope you think also The close only of your Discourse is considerable and therefore I shall transcribe it for your second thoughts And it is this But Sir what you say here and so often up and down your book of Papists contempt of the Scripture I beseech you will please to abstain from it for the time to come I have conversed with the Roman Catholicks of France â—â—anders and Germany I have read more of your Books both Histories Contemptative and Scholastical Divines thâ—n I believe you have ever seen or heard of I have seen the Colledges of Sacred Priests and Religious houses I have communed with all sort of people and perused their Counsells And after all this I tell you and out of my love I tell you that their respect to Scripture is real absolute and cordial even to admiration Others may talk of it but they act it and would be ready to stone that man that should diminish Holy Writ Let us not wrong the innocent The Scripture is theirs and Jesus Christ is theirs who also will plead their Cause when he sees time What you mention of your own diligence and atchievements what you have done where you have been what you have seen and discoursed I shall not trouble you about It may be as to your souls health Tutior poter as esse domi But yet for all the report that you are pleased to make of your self it is not hard to discern that you and I Nec pondera rerum Nec momenta sumus And notwithstanding your Writings it would have been very difficult for any man to have guessed at your great reading had you not satisfied us by this your own information of it It may be if you had spared some of the time which you have spent in the reading of your Catholick Books unto the study of the Scripture it had not been unto your disadvantage In the mean time there is an Hyperbole in your confidence a little too evident For it is possable that I may and true that I have seen more of your Authors in half an hour then you can read I think in an hundred years unless you intend alwayes to give no other account of your reading then you have done in your Fiat and Epistola But we are weary of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Quin tu alium quaer as quoi centones farcias But to pass by this boasting there are two parts of your Discourse the one concerning the faith the other expressing the Charity of Roman Catholicks The first contains what respect you would be thought to have for the Scripture the latter what you really have for all other Christians besides your selves As to the former you tell me that I speak of the Papists contempt of the Scripture and desire me to abstain from it for the time to come Whither I have used that expression anywhere of contempt of the Scripture well I know not But whereas I look upon you as my friend at least for the good advice I have frequently given you I have deserved that you should be so and therefore shall not deny you any thing that I can reasonably grant and whereas I cannot readily comply with you in your present request as to the alteration of my mind in reference unto the respect that Papists bear unto the Scriptures I esteem my self obliged to give you some account of the reasons why I persist in my former thoughts which I hope as is usual in such cases you will be pleased to take in friendly part For besides Sir that you back your request with nothing but some overconfident asseverations subscribed with teste meipso I have many reasons taken from the practice and Doctrine of your Church that strongly induce me to abide in my former perswasion As 1. You know that in these and the neighbouring Nations Papists have publickly burned the Scriptures and destroyed more Copies of them then ever Antiochus Epiphanes did of the Jewish Law And if you should go about to prove unto me that Protestants have no great regard to Sacred Images that have been worshipped because in these and the neighbouring Nations they brakes and burned a great number of them I should not readily know what to answer you Nor can I entertain any such confidence of your abilities as to expect from you a satisfactory answer unto my instance of the very same nature manifesting what respect Papists bear unto the Scriptures 2. You know that they have imprisoned and burned sundry persons for keeping the Scripture in their houses or some parts of them and reading them for their instruction and comfort Nor is this any great sign of respect unto them no more then it is of mens respect to treason or murder because they hang them up who are guilty of them And 3. Your Church prohibiteth the reading of them unto Lay-men unless in some special cases some few of them be licenced by you so to do and you study sweat for arguments to prove the reading of them needless and dangerous putting them as translated into the Catalogue of Books prohibited Now this is the very mark and stamp that your Church sets upon these books which she disapproves and discountenanceth as pernicious to the faithful 4. Your Councel of Trent hath decreed that your unwritten Traditions are to be received with the same faith and veneration as the Scripture constituting them to be one part of the Word of God and the Scriptures another then which nothing could be spoken more in contempt of it or in reproach unto it For I must assure you Protestants think you cannot possibly contract a greater guilt by any contempt of the Scripture then you do by reducing it into order with your unwritten Traditions 5. You have added Books not only written with an humane and fallible Spirit but farced with actual mistakes and falshoods unto the Canon of the Scripture giving just occasion unto them who receive it from you only to question the Authority of the whole And 6. You teach the Authority of the Scripture at least in respect of us which is all it hath for Authority is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and must regard some in relation unto whom it doth consist depends on the Authority of your Church the readiest way in the world to bring it into Contempt with them that know what your Church is and what it hath been And 7. You plead that it is very obscure and unintelligible of its self and that in things of the
greatest moment and of most indispensible necessity unto Salvation whereby you render it perfectly useless according to the old Rule Quod non potest intelligi debet negligi it is fit that should be neglected which cannot be understood And 8. There is a book lately written by one of your party after you have been frequently warned and told of these things entituled Fiat Lux giving countenance unto many other hard reflections upon it as hath been manifested in the Animadversions written on that Book 9. Your great Masters in their writings have spoken very contemptuously of it whereof I shall give you a few instances The Council of Trent which is properly yours determines as I told you that their Traditions are to be received and venerated pari pietatis affectu reverentia with an equal affection of piety and reverence as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament which is a setting up of the Altar of Damascus with that of God himself in the same Temple Sess. 4. Dec. 1. And Andradius no small part of that Convention in his defence of that Decree tells us that cum Christus fragilitati memoriae Evangelio scripto succurrendum putavit it a breve compendium libris tradi voluit ut pars maxima tanquam magni precii thesaurus traditionibus intimis Ecclesiae visceribus infixis relicta fuerit As our Lord Christ thought meet to relieve the frailty of memory by the written Gospel so he would have a short compendium or abridgement committed unto books that the greatest part as a most precious treasure might be left unto Traditions fixed in the very inward bowels of the Church This is that cordial and absolute respect even unto admiration that your Catholicks bear unto the Scripture And he that doth not admire it seems to me to be very stupid It contains some small part of the mysteries of Christian Religion the great treasure of them lying in your Traditions and thereupon he concludes Canonem seu Regulam fidei exactissimam non esse Scripturam sed Ecclesiae judicium that the Canon or most exact Rule of Faith is not the Scripture but the judgement of the Church Much to the same purpose as you plead in your Fiat and Epistola Pighius another Champion of your Church Ecclesiast Hierarch Lib. 1. c. 4. after he hath given many reasons to prove the obscurity of the Scripture with its flexibility to every mans sense as you know who also hath done and referred all things to be determined by the Church concludes Si hujus Doctrinae memores fuissemus haereticos scilicet non esse informandos vel convincendos ex Scripturis meliore same loco essent res nostrae sed dum ostentandi ingenii eruditionis gratia cum Luthero in certamen discenditur Scripturarum excitatum est hoc quod proh dolor nunc videmus incendium Had we been mindful of this Doctrine that Hereticks are not to be instructed nor convinced out of the Scriptures our affairs had been in a better condition then now they are but whilest some to shew their wit and learning would needs contend with Luther out of the Scriptures the fire which we now with grief behold was kindled and stirred up And it may be you remember who it was that called the Scripture Evangelium nigrum and Theologiam atramentariam seeing he was one of the most famous champions of your Church and Cause But before we quite leave your Council of Trent we may do well to remember the advice which the Fathers of it who upon the stirs in Germany removed unto Bononia gave to the Pope Julius the third which one that was then amongst them afterwards published Denique say they in their letters to him quod inter omnia consilia quae nos hoc tempore dare possumus omnium gravissimum ad extremum reservavimus Oculi hic aperiendi sunt omnibus nervis adnitendum erit ut quam minimum Evangelii poterit praesertim vulgari lingua in iis legatur Civitatibus quae sub tua ditione potestate sunt sufficiatque tantillum illud quod in missa legi solet nec eo amplius cuiquam mortalium legere liceat Quam diu enim pauculo illo homines contenti fuerunt tam diu res tuae ex sententia successêre â—aedemq in contrarium labi caeperunt ex quo ulterius legi vulgo usurpatum est Hic ille in summa Est liber qui praeter caeteros hasce nobis tempestates ac turbines conciliavit quibus prope abreptisumus Et sane siquis illum diligenter expendat deinde quae in nostris fieri ecclestis consueverunt singula ordine contempletur videbis plurimum inter se dissidere hanc doctrinam nostram ab illa prorsus diversam esse ac saepe contrariam etiam Quod simul atque homines intelligant à docto scilicet aliquo adversariorum stimulati nou ante clamandi finem faciunt quam rem plane omnem divulgaverint nosque invisos omnibus reddiderint Quare occultandae pauculae illae chartulae sed abhibita quadam cautione diligentia ne ea res majores nobis turbas ac tumultus excitet Last of all that which is the most Weighty of all the advices which that at this time we shall give unto you we have reserved for the close of all Your eyes are here to be opened you are to endeavour with the utmost of your power that as little as may be of the Gospel especially in any vulgar tongue be read in those Cities which are under your government and Authority but let that little suffice them which is wont to be read in the Mass of which mind you also know who is neither let it be lawful for any man to read any more of it For as long as men were contented with that little your affairs were as prosperous as heart could desire and began immediately to decline upon the custome of reading any more of it This is in brief that book which above all others hath procured unto us those tempests and storms wherewith we are almost carryed away headlong And the Truth is if any one shall diligently consider it and then seriously ponder on all the things that are accustomed to be done in our Churches he will find them to be very different the one from the other and our Doctrine to be divers from the Doctrine thereof yea and oftentimes plainly contrary unto it Now this when men begin to understand being stirred up by some learned man or other amongst the adversaries they make no end of clamouring until they have divulged the whole matter and rendred us hateful unto all Wherefore those few sheets of Paper are to be hid but with caution and diligence least their concealment should stir us up greater troubles This is fair and open being a brief summary of that admiration of the Scriptures which so abounds in Catholick Countreys That Hermannus one of some account in your Church affirmed that the
Scriptures could be of no more Authority then Aesops Fables were they not confirmed by the Testimony of your Church we are informed by one Brentius and we believe the information to be true because the saying is defended by Hosius de Authoritat Script Lib. 3. who adds unto it of his own Revera nisi nos Authoritas Ecclesiae doceret hanc scripturam esse Canoncam perexiguum apud nos pondus haberet the truth is if the Authority of the Church did not teach us that this Scripeure is Canomical it would be of very light weight unto us Such Cordial respects do you bear unto it And the forementioned Andradius Defens Con. Trid. Lib. 2. to the same purpose Neque enim in ipsis libris quibus sacra mysteria conscripta sunt quicquam in est Divinitatis quae nos ad credendum quae in illis continentur religione aliqua constring at sed Ecclesiae quae codices illos sacros esse docet antiquorum Patrum fidem pietatem commendat tanta inest vis amplitudo ut illis nemo sine gravissimâ impietatis nota possit repugnare neither is there in those books wherein the Divine Mysteries are written any thing or any character of Divinity or divine original which should on a religious account oblige us to believe the things that are contained in them But yet such is the force and Authority of the Church which teacheth thâ—se books to be sacred and commendeth the faith and piety of the Antient fathers that no man can oppose them without a grievous mark of impiety How by what means from whom should we learn the sense of your Church if not from your Council of Trent and such mighty Champions of it Do you think it equitable that we should listen to suggestions of every obscure Frier and entertain thoughts from them about the sense of your Church contrary to the plain assertion of your Councils and and great Rabbies And if this be the respect that in Catholick Countries is given to the Scripture I hope you will not find may of your Countrymen rivals with them therein It is all but Hayle and Crâ—cifie We respect the Scriptures but there is another part of Gods word besides them we respect the Scriptures but Traditions contain more of the Doctrine of Truth we respect the Scriptures but think it not meet that Christians be suffered to read them we respect the Scripture but do not think that it hath any character in it of its own Divine original for which we should believe it we respect the Scripture but yet we would not believe were it not commended unto us by our Church we respect the Scripture but it is dark obscure not intelligible but by the interpretation of our Church Pray Sir keep your respects at home they are despised by the Scripture it self which gives Testimony unto its own Authority Perfection Sufficiency to guide us to God Perspicuity and Certainty without any respect unto your Church or its Authority And we know its Testimony to be true And for our parts we fear that whilest these Joabs kisses of respect are upon your lips you have a sword in your right hands to let out all the Vitals of Divine Truth and Religion Do you think your general expressions of respect and that unto admiration are a covering long and broad enough to hide all this contempt and reproach that you continually poure upon the Scriptures Deal thus with your Ruler and see whether he will accept your Person Give him some good words in general but let your particular expressions of your esteem of him come short of what his state and regal dignity do require will it be well taken at your hands Expressions of the same nature with these instanced in might be collected out of your chiefest Authors sufficient to fill a volume and yet I never read nor heard that any of them were ever stoned in your Catholick Countreys whatever you intimate of the boyling up of your zeal into a rage against those that should go about to diminish it Indeed whatever you pretend this is your faith about the Scripture and therefore I desire that you would accept of this account why I cannot comply with your wish and not speak any more of Papists slighting the Scripture seeing I know they do so in the sense and way by me expressed and other wayes I never said they did so From the account of your Faith we may proceed to your Charity wherewith you close this Discourse Speaking of your Roman Catholicks you say the Scripture is theirs and Jesus Christ is theirs who will one day plead their Cause What do you mean Sir by theirs Do you intend it exclusively to all others so theirs as not to be the right and portion of any other It is evident that this is your sense not only because unless it be so the words have neither sense nor emphasis in them but also because suitably unto this sense you elsewhere declare that the Roman and the Catholick Church are with you one and the same This is your Charity fit to accompany and to be the fruit of the faith before discoursed of This is your Chatholicism the impaling of Christ Scripture the Church and consequently all acceptable Religion to the Roman Party and Faction down right Donatism the wretchedest Schism that ever rent the Church of God which makes the wounds of Christendome incurable and all hope of coalition in Love desperate Saint Paul directing one of his Epistles unto all that in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that no countenance from that expression of our Lord Jesus Christ might be given unto any surmize of his appropriating unto himself and those with him a peculiar interest in Jusus Christ he adds immediately both their Lord and ours the Lord of all that in every place call upon his name 1 Cor. 1. This was the old Catholicism which the new hath as much affinity unto as darkness hath to light and not one jot more The Scripture is ours and Christ is ours and what have any else to do with them what though in other places you call on the name of Jesus Christ yet he is our Lord not yours This I say is that wretched Schism which cloathed with the name of Catholicism which after it had slain it robbed of its name and garments the world for some ages hath groaned under and is like to do so whilst it is supported by so many secular advantages and interests as are subservient unto it at this day CHAP. 14. Of Reason Jews objections against Christ. PAg. 27. You proceed to vindicate your unreasonable Paragraph about Reason or rather against it What reason we are to expect in a dispute against the use of Reason in and about the things which are the highest and most proper object of it is easie for any one to imagine For by Reason in Religion we understand not meerly the Raâ—ocination
Platin. vita Gregor 6. Sigon de Reg. lib. 8. From that time forward untill the Reformation no one age can be instanced in wherein great open and signal opposition was not made unto the Papal Authority which you seek again to introduce The instances already given are sufficient to convince the vanity of your pretence that never any opposition was made unto it Of the same nature is that which you nextly affirm of all the Bishops and Priests of Africa Egypt Syria Thrace Greece and all the Christian world by an hundred experiments acknowledging the supream spiritual Authority of the Roman Patriarch I must I see still mind you of what it is that you are to speak unto It is not the Patriarchate of your Pope with the Authority Priviledges and preheminences which by virtue thereof he layes claim unto but his singular succession to Christ and Peter in the absolute Headship of the whole Catholick Church that you are treating about Now supposing you may be better skilled in the affairs of the Eastern Church then for ought as I can yet perceive you are in those of the Western let me crave this favour of you that you would direct me unto one of those hundred experiments whereby the acknowledgment you mention preceding the Conversion of the Nothern Nations may be confirmed It will I confess unto you be a singular kindness seeing I know not where to find any one of that nature within the time limited noâ— to tell you the Truth since unto this day For I suppose you will not imagine that the faigned Prosessions of subjection which poverty and hopes of supplies from the Court of Rome hath extorted of late from some few mean persons whose Titles only were of any Consideration in the world will deserve any place in this disquisition Untill you are pleased therefore to favour me with your information I must abide in my ignorance of any such experiments as those which you intimate The Artifices I confess of your Popes in former dayes to draw men especially in the Eastern Church to an acknowledgement of that Authority which in their several seasons they claimed have been many and their success various Sometimes they obtained a seeming compliance in some and sometimes they procured their Authors very shrewd rebukes It may not be amiss to recount some of them 1. Upon all occasions they set forth themselves the dignity and preheminence of your See with swelling Encomiums and Titles asserting their own Primacy and Power Such self assumings are many of the old Papal Epistles stuffed withall A sober humble Christian cannot but nauseate at the reading of them For it is easily discernable how Antievangelical such Courses are and how unbecoming all that pretend themselves to be Disciples of Jesus Christ from these are their chiefest Testimonies in this Case taken and we may say of them all they bear witness to themselves and that contrary to the Scripture and their witness is not true 2. When and wherever such Letters and Epistles as proclaimed their Priviledges have been admitted through the inadvertency of Modesty of them to whom they were sent unwilling to quarrel with them about the good opinion which they had of themselves which kind of entertainment they yet sometimes met not withall the next successors allwayes took for granted and pleaded what their predecessours had presumptuously broached as that which of right and unquestionably belonged unto them And this they made sure of that they would never lose any ground or take any one step backwards from what any of them had advanced unto 3. Wherever they heard of any difference among Bishops they were still imposing their Vmpirage upon them which commonly by the one or other of the parties at variance to ballance thereby some disadvantages that they had to wrestle withall was admitted yea sometimes they would begin to take part with them that were openly in the wrong even Hereticks themselves that they might thereby procure an address to them from others which afterwards they would interpret as an express of their subjection And wherever their Vmpirage was admitted they were never wanting to improve their own interest by it like the old Romans who being chosen to determine a Controversie between other People about some lands adjudged them unto themselves 4. If any Person that was really injured or pretended so to be made any Address unto them for any kind of Relief immediately they laid hold of their Address as an Appeal to their Authority and acted in their behalf accordingly though they were sometimes chidden for their pains and advised to meddle with what they had to do withall 5. Did any Bishops of note write them Letters of respect presently in their rescripts they return them thanks for their profession of subjection to the See Apostolick so supposing them to do that which in truth they did not they promise to do for them that which they never desired and by both made way for the enlargment of the confines of their own authority 6. Where any Prince or Emperour was entangled in his affairs they were still ready to crush them into that condition of trouble from whence they could not be delivered but by their assistance or to make them believe that their adherence unto them was the only means to preserve them from ruine and so procured their suffrage unto their Authority Unto these and the like heads of Corrupt and sinful Artifices may the most of the Testimonies commonly pleaded for the Popes Supremacy be referred By such wayes and means hath it been erected Yet far enough from any such prevalency for seven hundred years as to afford us any of the experiments which you boast of The next thing you except against in my story is my affirming that Austin the Monk who came hither from Rome was a man as far as appears by story the little acquainted with the Gospel In the repetition of which words to keep your hand in ure you leave out that expression as far as appears by the story which is the evidence whereunto I appeal for the Truth of my Assertion and add to aggravate the matter the word very very little and then add here is the thanks that good St. Austin hath who out of his love and kindness entred upon the wild forrest of our Paganism with great hazards and inexpressible sufferings of hunger cold and other corporal inconveniencies But in the place you except against I acknowledge that God made him a special instrument in bringing the Scripture or Gospel amongst us which I presume also he declared according to the light and ability which he had But you are your own Mothers Son nothing will serve your turn but absolute most pure and perfect For what I have further intimated of him there are sundry things in the History of his coming hither and proceedings here that warrant the suggestion The Questions that he sent for Resolution unto Gregory at Rome discover what manner of man he
end doth so absolutely moralize an action that it of its self should render it good or evil Evil it may but good of its self it cannot For Bonum oritur ex integris causis malum ex quolibet defectu Rectifying the intention will not secure your morality And yet also on second thoughts that I see not much difference between the ends that Celsus proposed unto himself upon his generall Principle and those that you propose to your self upon your own as well as the way whereby you proceed is the same But yet upon the accounts before mentioned I shall free you from your fears of being thought like him 3. When Protestants preach against our Divisions they charge them upon the Persons of them that are guilty whereas you do it on the Principles of the Religion that they profess so that although you may deal like Celsus they do not 4. The scurrilous Sarcasm wherewith you close your Discourse is not meet for any thing but the entertainment of a Friar and his Concubine such as in some places formerly men have by publick Edicts forced you to maintain as the only Expedient to preserve their families from being defiled by you 5. Let us now pass through the Instances that you have culled out of many charged upon you to be the same with those of Celsus concerning which you make such a trebled Outcry does he does he does he The first is Doth Fiat Lux lay the cause of all Tumults and Disorders on Protestants clames licet mare coelo confundas Fiat Lux doth so chap. 4. § 17. p. 237. § 18. p. 242 243. § 20. p. 255. and in sundry other places You adde Doth he charge Protestants that by their schisms and seditions they make way for other revolts He doth so and that frequently chap. 3. § 14. p. 187 c. Doth he you adde gather a Rhapsody of insignificant words as did Celsus I say he doth in the pretended plea that he insists on for Quakers and for Presbyterians also chap. 3. § 13. p. 172 173 c. Again Doth he manage the Arguments of the Jews against Christianity as was done by Celsus He doth directly expresly and at large chap. 3. § 12. p. 158. c. I confess because it may be you know it not you might have questioned the truth of my parallel on the side that concerned Celsus which yet I am ready at any time if you shall so do to give you satisfaction in but that you would question it on your own part when your whole discourse and the most of the passages in it make it so evident I could not foresee But your whole Defence is nothing but a noise or an outery to deter men from coming nigh you to see how the Case stands with you It will not serve your turn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you must abide by what you have done or fairly retract it In the mean time I am glad to find you ashamed of that which elswhere you so much boast and glory in With the sixth and seventh Principles mentioned by me you deal in like manner You deny them to be yours which is plainly to deny your self to be the Author of Fiat Lux. And surely every man that hath once looked seriously into that Discourse of yours will be amazed to hear you saying that you never asserted Our Departure from Rome to be the Cause of the Evils among Protestants or that There is no Remedy for them but by a Returnal thither again which are the things that now you deny to be spoken or intended by you For my part I am now so used unto this kind of Confidence that nothing you say or deny seems strange unto me And whereas unto your Denial you adde not any thing that may give occasion unto any usefull Discourse I shall pass it by and proceed unto that which will afford us some better advantage unto that purpose CHAP. VI. Further Vindication of the second Chapter of th◠Animadversions Scripture sufficient to settle men in the Truth Instance against it examined removed Principles of Protestants and Romanists in reference unto Moderation compared and discussed THe eighth Principle which way soever it be determined is of great importance as to the Cause under debate Here then we shall stay a while and examine the difficulties which you labour to entangle that Assertion withall which we acknowledge to be the great and Fundamentall Principle of our Profession and you oppose The Position I laid down as yours is That the Scripture on sundry accounts is in sufficient to settle us in the Truth of Religio◠or to bring us to an agreement amongst our selves Hereunto I subjoyned the four heads of Reasons which in your Fiat you insisted on to make good your Assertion These you thought meet to pass by without reviving them again to your further disadvantage You are acquainted it seems with the old Rule Et quà Desperat tractata nitescere posse relinquit The Position its self you dare not directly deny but yet seek what you can to wave the owning of it contrary to your express Discourse Chap. 3. § 15. p. 199 200 c. as also in sundry other places interwoven with expressions exceedingly derogatory to the Authority Excellency Efficacy and fullness of the Scripture as hath been shewed in the Animadversions But let us now consider what you plead for your self Thus then you proceed You speak not one word to the purpose or against me at all if I had delivered any such Principle Gods Word is both the sufficient and only necessary means of both our Conversion and Settlement as well in Truth as Vertue But the thing you heed not and unto which I only speak is this that the Scripture be in two hands for example of the Protestant Church in England and of the Puritan who with the Scripture rose up and rebelled against her Can the Scripture alone of its self decide the business How shall it do it has it ever done it Or can that written Word now solitary and in private hands so settle any in a way that neither himself nor present adherents nor future generations shall question it or with as much probability dissent from it either totally or in part as himself first set it This is the Case unto which you do neither here nor in your whole Book speak one word and what you speak otherwise of the Scriptures excellency I allow it for Good 1. Because you are not the only Judge of what I have written nor indeed any competent Judge of it at all I shall not concern my self in the Censure which your Interest compells you to pass upon it It is left unto the thoughts of those who are more impartial 2. Setting aside your Instance pitched on ad invidiam only with some aequivocall expressions as must needs be thought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very artificially to be put into the state of a Question and that which you deny is
this that where any persons or Churches are at variance or difference about any thing concerning Religion or the worship of God the Scripture is not sufficient for the Vmpirage of that Difference so that they may be reconciled and center in the Profession of the same Truth I wish you would now tell me what discrepancy there is between the Assertion which I ascribed unto you and that which your self here avow I suppose they are in substance the same and as such will be owned by every one that understands any thing of the matters about which we treat And this is so spoken unto in the Animadversions that you have no mind to undertake the examination of it but labour to divert the discourse unto that which may appear something else but indeed is not so 3. For your Distinction between Protestants and Puritans in England I know not well what to make of it I know no Puritans in England that are not Protestants though all the Protestants in England do not absolutely agree in every punctilio relating to Religion nor in all things relating unto the outward worship of God no more than did the Churches in the Apostles dayes or than your Catholicks do You give us then a Distinction like that which a man may give between the Church of Rome and the Jesuits or Dominicans or the Sons of S t. Benet or of S t Francis of Assize A Distinction or Distribution of the Genus into the Genus and one Species comprehended under it as if you should have said that Animal is either Animal or Homo 4. Though I had rather therefore that you had placed your Instance between the Church of Rome and Protestants yet because any instance of Persons that have different Apprehensions about things belonging to the worship of God will suffice us as to the present purpose I shall let it pass Only I desire you once more that when you would endeavour to render any thing way or acting of men odious that you would forbear to cast the Scripture into a Copartnership therein which here you seem to do The Puritan you say with the Scripture rose up and rebelled Rebellion is the name of an outragious Evil such as the Scripture giveth not the least Countenance unto And therefore when you think meet to charge it upon any you may do well not to say that they do it with the Scripture It will not be to your comfort or advantage so to do This is but my advice you may do as you see cause Tales Casus Cassandra canebat 5. The Differences you suppose and look upon as undeterminable by the Scripture are about things that in themselves really and in truth belong unto Christian Religion or such as do not so indeed but are only fancied by some men so to do If they are of this latter sort as the most of the Controversies which we have with you are as about your Mass Purgatory the Pope we account that all Differences about them are sufficiently determined in the Scriptures because they are no where mentioned in them And this must needs be so if the Word of God be as you here grant the sufficient and only means both of our Conversion and Settlement as well in Truth as in Vertue S r I had no sooner written these words in that haste wherein I treat with you but I suspected a necessity of craving your pardon for supposing my Inference confirmed by your Concession For whereas you had immediately before set down the Assertion supposed to be yours about the Scriptures you adde the words now mentioned Gods Word is the sufficient and only means of our Conversion and Settlement in the Truth I did not in the least suspect that you intended any Legerdemain in the business but that the Scripture and Gods Word had been only various denominations with you of the same precise Thing as they are with us Only I confess at the first view I wondred how you could reconcile this Assertion with the known Principles of your Church and besides I knew it to be perfectly destructive of your design in your following Enquiry But now I fear you play hide and seek in the ambiguity your Church hath put upon that Title Gods Word which it hath applyed unto your unwritten Traditions as well as unto the written Word as the Jews apply the same term unto their Orall Law And therefore as I said before I crave your pardon for supposing my Inference confirmed by your Concession wherein I fear I was mistaken and only desire you that for the future you would speak your mind plainly and candidly as it becomes a Christian and Lover of Truth to do But my Assertion I esteem never the worse though it have not the happiness to enjoy your approbation especially considering that in the particular Instances mentioned there are many things delivered in Scripture inconsistent with and destructive of your notions about them sufficient to exterminate them from the Confines of the City of God 6. Suppose the matters in difference do really belong unto Religion and the worship of God and that the Difference lyes only in mens various Conceptions of them you ask Can the Scripture alone of its self decide the business What do you mean by alone of its self If you mean without mens application of themselves unto it and subjecting of their Consciences unto its Authoritative decisions neither it nor any thing else can do it The matter its self is perfectly stated in the Scripture whether any men take notice of it or no but their various apprehensions about it must be regulated by their applications unto it in the way mentioned On this only Supposition that those who are at variance about things which really appertain unto the Religion of Jesus Christ will refer the determination of them unto the Scripture and bring the Conâ—eptions of their minds to be regulated thereby standing unto its Arbitriment it is able alone and of its self to end all their differences and settle them all iu the Truth This hath been proved unto you a thousand times and confirmed by most clear Testimonies of the Scripture its self with Arguments taken from its Nature Perfection and the End of its giving forth unto men as also from the practise of our Lord Jesus and his Apostles with their directions and commands given unto us for the same Purpose from the Practise of the First Churches with innumerable Testimonies of the Ancient Fathers and Doctors Neither can this be denied without that horrible Derogation from its Perfection and Plenitude so reverenced by them of old which is objected unto you for your so doing Protestants suppose the Scripture to be given forth by God to be unto the Church â—a perfect Rule of that Faith and Obedience which he requires at the hands of the sons of men They suppose that it is such a Revelation of his Mind or Will as is intelligible unto all them that are concerned to know
believed to belong to the Unity of Faith Lastly The Determinations of your Church you make to be the next efficient Cause of your Unity now these not being absolutely infallible leave it like Delos flitting up and down in the Sea of Probabilities only This we shall manifest unto you immediately at least we shall evidence that you have no cogent reasons nor slable grounds to prove your Church infallible in her Determinations At present it shall suffice to mind you that she hath Determined Contradictions and that in as eminent a manner as it is possible for her to declare her sense by namely by Councils confirmed by Popes and an infallible determination of Contradictions is not a Notion of any easie digestion in the thoughts of a man in his right wits We confess then that we cannot agree with you in your Rule of the Unity of Faith though the thing its self we press after as our Duty For 2. Protestants do not conceive this Vnity to consist in a precise Determination of all Questions that are or may be raised in or about things belonging unto the Faith whether it be made by your Church or any other way Your Thomas of Aquine who without question is the best and most sober of all your School Doctors hath in one Book given us 522 Articles of Religion which you esteem mraculously stated Quot Articuli tot Miracula All these have at least five Questions one with another stated and determined in explication of them which amount unto 2610 Conclusions in matters of Religion Now we are farre from thinking that all these Determinations or the like belong unto the Unity of Faith though much of the Religion amongst some of you lyes in not dissenting from them The Questions that your Bellarmine hath determined and asserted the Positions in them as of faith and necessary to be believed are I think neer 40 times as many as the Articles of the antient Creed of the Church and such as it is most evident that if they be of the nature and importance pretended it is impossible that any considerable number of men should ever be able to discharge their duty in this business of holding the Vnity of Faith That a man believe in generall that the holy Scripture is given by inspiration from God and that all things proposed therein for him to believe are therefore infallibly true and to be as such believed and that in particular he believe every Article or point of Truth that he hath sufficient means for his instruction in and conviction that it is so revealed they judg to be necessary unto the holding of the Unity of Faith And this also they know that this sufficiency nf means unto every one that enjoys the benefit of the Scriptures extends its self unto all those Articles of Truth which are necessary for him to believe so as that he may yield unto God the obedience that he requireth receive the holy Spirit of promise and be accepted with God Herein doth that Vnity of Faith which is amongst the Disciples of Christ in the world consist and ever did nor can do so in any thing else Nor doth that variety of Apprehensions that in many things is found among the Disciples of Christ and ever was render this Vnity like that you plead for various and incertain For the Rule and formall Reason of it namely Gods Revelation in the Scripture is still one and the same perfectly unalterable And the severall degrees that men attain uuto in their Apprehensions of it doth no more reflect a charge of variety upon it than the difference of Seeing as to the severall degrees of the sharpness or obtuseness of our bodily eyes doth upon the Light given by the Sunne The Truth is if there was any common measure of the Assents of men either as to the intension of it as it is subjectively in their minds or extension of it as it respecteth Truths revealed that belonged unto the Vnity of Faith it were impossible there should be any such thing in the world at least that any such thing should be known to be Only this I acknowledg that it is the Duty of all men to come up to the full and explicit acknowledgment of all the Truths revealed in the word of God wherein the Glory of God and the Christians Duty are concerned as also to a joynt consent in Faith objective or propositions of Truth revealed at least in things of most importance though their faith subjective or the internal assent of their minds have as it will have in severall Persons various degrees yea in the same Persons it may be at different seasons And in our labouring to come up unto this joynt-acknowledgment of the same sense and intendment of God in all revealed Truths consists our endeavour after that perfection in the Vnity of Faith which in this life is attainable as our moderation doth in our walking in peace and love with and towards others according to what we have already attained We may distinguish then between that Unity of Faith which an interest in gives Vnion with Christ unto them that hold it and Communion in Love with all equally interested therein and that Accomplishment of it which gives a sameness of Profession and consent in all acts of outward Communion in the worship of God The first is found in and amongst all the Disciples of Christ in the world where-ever they are the latter is that which moreover it is your Duty to press after The former consists in an Assent in generall unto all the Truths of God revealed in the Scripture and in particular unto them that we have sufficient means to evidence them unto us to be so revealed The latter may come under a double consideration for either there may be required unto it in them who hold it the joynt perception of and assent unto every Truth revealed in the Scripture with an equall degree of certainty in adherence and evidence in perception and it is not in this life wherein the best of us know but in part attainable or only such a concurrence in an assent unto the necessary Propositions of Truth as may enable them to hold together that outward Communion in the worship of God which we before mentioned And this is certainly attainable by the wayes and means that shall immediately be layed down And where this is there is the Vnity of Faith in that compleatness which we are bound to labour for the attainment of This the Apostolicall Churches enjoyed of old and unto the recovery whereof there is nothing more prejudiciall than your new stating of it upon the account of your Churches Proposals This Unity of Faith we judg good and necessary and that it is our Duty to press after it So also in generall do you It remains then that we consider what is the way what are the means and Principles that Protestants propose and insist upon for the attainment of it that is in answer
quiver are these arrows taken Is this fair sober Candid Christian dealing have you no way to defend the Authority of your Church but by Questioning the Authority of the Scripture Did ever any of the Fathers of old or any in the world before your selves take this course to plead their interests in any thing they professed Is this Practice Catholick or like many of your Principles singular your own Donatisticall Is it any great sign that you have an interest in that living Child when you are so ready he should be destroyed rather than you would be cast in your Contest with Protestants 2. Do you think that this course of proclaiming to Atheists Turks and Pagans that the Scripture which all Christians maintain against them to be the Word of the Living GOD given by inspiration from Him and on which the Faith of all the Martyrs who have suffered from their opposition rage and cruelty and of all others that truly believe in Jesus Christ was and is founded and whereinto it is resolved hath no Arguments of its Divine Original implanted on it no lines of the Excellencies and Perfections of its Author drawn on it no power or efficacy towards the Consciences of men evidencing its Authority over them no ability of its self to comfort and support them in their tryals and sufferings with the hope of things that are not seen Is this think you an acceptable service unto the Lord Christ who will one day judg the secrets of all hearts according unto that Word or Is it not really to expose Christian Religion to scorn and contempt And do you find so much sweetness in Delus an Virtus quis in hoste requirat as to cast off all Reverence of God and his Word in the pursuit of the supposed Adversaries of your earthly Interests 3. If your Arguments and Objections are effectuall and privalent unto the end for which you intend them will not your direct issue be the utter overthrow of the very foundation of the whole Profession of Christians in the world And are you like Sampson content to pull down the house that must fall upon your selves also so that you may stifle Protestants with its sall It may be it were well you should do so were it an house of Dagon a Temple dedicated unto Idols but to deal so with that wherein dwels the Majesty of the Living GOD is not so justifiable It is true Evert this Principle and you overthrow the foundation on which the faith of Protestants is built but it is no less true that you do the same to the foundation of the Christian Faith in generall wherein wee hope your own concernment also lyes And this is the thing that I am declaring unto you namely that either you acknowledg the Principles on which Protestants build their Faith and Profession or by denying them you open a door unto Atheism at least to the extirpation of Christian Religion out of the world I confess you pretend a relief against the present instance in the Authority of your Church sufficient as you say to give a Credibility unto the Scriptures though its own self-evidencing Power and Efficacy with the Confirmation of it by Catholick Tradition exclusive to your present suffrage be rejected Now I suppose you will grant that the Prop you supply men withall upon your casting down the foundations on which they have laid the weight of their eternall Salvation had need be firm and immoveable And remember that you have to do with them who though they may be otherwise inclineable unto you Non tamen ignorant quid distent aera a lupinis and must use their own judgement in the Consideration of what you tender unto them And they Ask you 1. What will you do if it be as you say with them who absolutely reject the Authority of your Châ—â—ch which is the condition of more than a moyety of the Inhabitants of the world to speak sufficiently within compass And 2. What will you advise us to say to innumerable other Persons that are pious and rational who upon the meer consideration of the lives of many of the most of the guides of your Church your bloody inhumane practices your pursuit of worldly carnall designs your visible secular interest wherein you are combined and united cannot perswade themselves that the Testimony of your Church in and about things that are invisible spirituall heavenly and eternall is at all valuable much less that it is sufficient to bear the weight you would lay upon it 3. Was not this the way and method of Vaninus for the Introduction of his Atheism first to question sleight and sophistically except against the old approved Arguments and Evidences manifesting the beeing and existence of a Divine self-subsisting Power substituting in their room for the confirmation of it his own Sophisms which himself knew might be easily discussed and disproved Do you deal any better with us in decrying the Scripture's self-evidencing Efficacy with the Testimony given unto it by God himself substituting nothing in the room thereof but the Authority of your Church A man certainly can take up nothing upon the sole Authority of your Church untill contrary to the pretensions Reasons and Arguments of far a greater number of Christians than your selves he acknowledge you to be a true Church at least if not the only Church in the world Now how I pray will you bring him into that state and condition that he may rationally make any such judgement How will you prove unto him that there is any such thing as a Church in the World that a Church hath any Authority that its Testimony can make any thing credible or meet to be believed You must prove these things to him or whatever assent he gives unto what you say is from fanaticall credulity To suppose that he should believe you upon your word because you are the Church is to suppose that he believes that which you are yet but attempting to induce him to believe If you persist to press him without other proof not only to believe what you first said unto him but also even this that whatever you shall say to him hereafter that he must believe it because you say it Will not any rationall man nauseate at your unreasonable importunity and tell you that men who have a mind to be befooled may meer with such Alchymisticall pretenders all the world over Will you perswade him that you are the Church and that the Church is furnished with the Authority mentioned by rational Arguments I wish you would inform me of any one that you can make use of that doth not include a Supposition of something unproved by you and which can never be proved but by your own Authority which is the thing in Question or the immediate Authority of God which you reject A number indeed of pretences or it may be Probabilities you may heap together which yet upon examination will not be found so much neither unless a
fuerit haec ratio firmiter adharendi quòd in ea veritas sit solidior quamvis non clarior Habet enim omnis veritas vim inclinativam major majorem maxima maximam Sed cur ergo omnes non credunt Evangelio Respondeo quod non omnes trahuntur à Deo And again Inest ergo Scripturis Sacris nescio quid Natur â sublimius idest inspiratio facta divinitus divinae irradiation is influxus certus But whence are wee perswaded that it is from the First Verity but from it Self It s own Authority draws us to believe it But whence obtains it this Authority â— we see not God preaching writing teaching but yet as if we had seen him we believe and firmly hold that which we read to have come from the Holy Ghost It may be that this is a reason of our firm adhering unto it that the Truth in it is more solid though not more clear than in any other way of proposall and all truth hath a power to incline unto belief the greater the Truth the greater its power and the greatest Truth must have the greatest power so to incline us But why then do not all believe the Gospell I answer because all are not drawn of God There is then in the holy Scripture somewhat more sublime than Nature that is the Divine Inspiration from whence it is and the Divine Irradiation wherewith it is accompanied This is the Principle of Protestants The Sacred Scripture is credible as proceeding from the first Verity this it manifests by its own Light and Efficacy and we are enabled to believe it by the effectuall working of the Spirit of God in our hearts Whence our Saviour asks the Jews Joh 5. If you believe not the writing of Moses how will you believe my words They who will not believe the written Word of the Scripture upon the Authority that it hath in its self would not believe if Christ should personally speak unto them So saith Theophylact on the place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. Protestants believe and profess that the End wherefore God gave forth his Word by Inspiration was that it might be a stable Infallible Revelation of his mind and will as to that knowledge which he would have mankind entertain of him with that Worship and Obedience which he requireth of them that so they may please him in this world and come unto the fruition of him unto all eternity God who is the formal object is also the prime Cause of all Religious worship What is due unto him as the first Cause last End and Soveraign Lord of all as to the substance of it and what he further appoints himself as to the manner of its performance suited unto his own Holiness and the Condition wherein in reference unto our Last end we stand and are making up the whâ—le of it That he hath given his Word to reveal these things unto us to be our Rule Guide and Direction in our wayes walkings and universal deportment before him is as I take it a fundamentall Principle of our Christian Profession Neither do I know that this is denied by your Church although you startle at the inferences that are justly made from it I shall not need therefore to adde any thing in its Confirmation but only mind you again that the calling of it into question is directly against the very heart of all Religion and the unanimous consent of all that in the world are called Christians or ever were so Yea and it must be granted or the whole Scripture esteemed a Fable because it frequently declares that it is given unto us of God for this End and Purpose And hence do Protestants inferre two other Conclusions on which they build their Perswasion concerning the Vnity of Faith and the proper means of their Settlement therein 1. That therefore the Scripture is perfect and every way compleat namely with respect unto that end whereunto of God it is designed A Perfect and compleat Revelation of the Will of God as to his Worship and our Obedience And we cannot but wonder that any who profess themselves to believe that it was given for the end mentioned should not have that sacred Reverence for the Wisdome Goodness and Love of its Author unto mankind as freely to assent unto this Inference and Conclusion He is our Rock and his work is perfect And lest any men should please themselves in the imagination of contributing any thing towards the effecting of the end of his Word by a supply unto it he hath strictly forbidden them any such addition Deut. 4. 2. 12. 12. Prov. 30. 6. Which if it were not compleat in reference unto its proper End would hold no great correspondency with that Love and goodness which the same Word every where declares to be in Him I suppose you know with how many express Testimonies of Scripture its self this Truth is confirmed which added unto that light and evidence which as a deduction from the former fundamental Truth it hath in its self is very sufficient to render it unquestionable You may at your leasure besides these forenamed consult Psal. 19. 8. Esa. 8. 20. Ezek. 28. 18. Mat. 15. 6. Luk. 1. 3 4. ch 16. 29 31. ch 24. 25 27. Job 5. 39. ch 20. 10 Act. 1. 11. ch 17. 2 3. ch 20. 27. chapt 26. 22. Rom. 10. 17. ch 15. 4. 1 Cor. 4. 6. Gal. 1. 8. Eph. 2. 19 20. 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. Heb. 1. 1. 2 Pet. 1. 19. Rev 22. 18. For though Texts of Scripture are not appointed for us to throw at one anothers heads as you talk in your Fiat yet they are for us to use and insist on in the Confirmation of the Truth if we may take the example of Christ and all his Apostles for our warrant And it were endless to recite the full and plain Testimonies of the Ancient Fathers and Councels to this purpose Neither is that my present design though I did somwehat occasionally that way upon the former Principle It shall suffice me to shew that the deny all of this Assertion also as it is inferred from the foregoing Principle is Prejudiciall if not pernicious to Christian Religion in Generall The whole of our Faith and Profession is resolved into the known Excellencies and Perfections of the Nature of God Amongst these there are none that have a more immediate and quickning influence into them than his Wisdom Goodness Grace Care and Love towards them unto whom he is pleased to reveal himself Nor is there any property of his Nature that in his Word he more frequently gives testimony unto And all of them doth he declare himself to have exalted and glorified in a signall manner in that Revelation which he hath made of himself his Mind and Will therein I suppose this cannot be denied by any who hath the least sense of the importance of the things revealed Now if the Revelation made for the End before proposed be not perfect
And that A man once rid of his Authority may as easily deride and as solidly confute the Incarnation as the Sprinkling of Holy water so resolving our faith of the Incarnation of Christ into his Authority or Testimony Yea and in the same page That if it had not been for the Pope Christ himself had not been taken in the world for any such Person as he is believed this day And p. 378. to the same purpose The first great fundamental of Christian Religion which is the Truth and Divinity of Christ had it not been for him had failed long ago in the world with much more to the same purpose Hence it is evident that in your judgment all Truth and Certainty in Region depends on the Popes Anthority and Infallibility or as you express it his unerring guidance This is your Principle this you propose as the only medium to bring us unto that Settlement in Religion which you suppose the Scripture is not able to do What course should we now take would you have us believe you at the first word without further triall or examination would you have a man to do so who never before heard of Pope or Church We are commanded to try all things and to hold fast that which is good to try pretending Spirits and the Beraeans are commended for examining by the Scripture what Paul himself preached unto them An implicit Credulity given up to such Dictates is the height of Fanaticism Have wee not reason then to call you and your copartners in this design to an accoun â—how you prove that which you so strenuously assert and suppose and to examine the Principles of that Authority whereunto you resolve all your faith and Religion If upon mature consideration these prove Solid and the Inferences you make from them Cogent it is good Reason that you should be attended unto If they prove otherwise if the first be false and the latter Sophistical you cannot justly take it ill of him that shall advise you to take heed that whilest you are gloriously displaying your Colours the ground that you stand upon do not sink under your feet And here you are forced to go many a step backward to fix your first footing untill you leave your Pope quite out of sight from whence you advance towards him by severall degrees and so arive at his Supremacie and Infallibility and so we shall have Reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri 1. Your first Principle to this purpose is That Peter was the Prince of the Apostles and that in him the Lord Jesus founded a Monarchy in his Church So pag. 360. you call him the head and Prince of the whole Congregation Now this wee think no meet Principle for any one to begin withall in asserting the foundation of Faith and Religion Nor do we think that if it were meet so to be used that it is any way subservient unto your design and purpose 1. A Principle fundamental or first entrance into any way of Settlement in Faith or Religion it cannot possibly be because it presupposeth the knowledg of and assent unto many other great fundamental Articles of Christian Religion yea upon the matter all that are so For before you can rationally talk with a man about Peters Principality and the Monarchical state of the Church hereon depending you must suppose that he believes the Scripture 〈◊〉 be the Word of God and all things that are taught therein concerning Jesus Christ his Person Nature Offices Work and Gospell to be certainly and infallibly true for they are all supposed in your Assertion which without the knowledg of them is uncouth horrid insignificant and forraign to all notions that a man can rationally entertain of God or Religion Nay no attempt of proof or confirmation can be given unto it but by and from Scripture whereby you fall directly into the Principle which you seek so carefully to avoid namely that the Scripture is the only way and means of setling us in the Truth since you cannot settle any man in the very first proposition which you make to lead him into another way but by the Scripture So powerfull is Truth that those who will not follow it willingly it will lead them captive in Triumph whether they will or no. 2. It is unmeet for any purpose because it is not true No one word from the Scripture can you produce in its confirmation wherein yet if it be not revealed it must pass as a very uncertain and frivolous conjecture You can produce no suffrage of the Ancient Church unto your purpose which yet if you could would not presently render any Assertion so confirmed infallibly certain much less fundamental Some indeed of the 4 th Century call Peter Principem Apostolorum but explain themselves to intend thereby 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first or Leader not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Prince or Ruler And when the ambiguity of that word began to be abused unto pretensions of Preeminence the Council of Carthage expresly condemned it allowing none to be termed Princeps Sacerdotum Many in those dayes thought Peter to be among the Apostles like the Princeps Senatus or Princeps Civi atis the chief in their Assemblies or Principall in dignity how truly I know not but that he should be amongst them and over them a Prince in Office a Monarch as to Rule and Power is a thing that they never once dreamed of and the Asseveration of it is an open untruth The Apostles were equall in their Call Office Place Dignity Employments All the difference between them was in their Labours Sufferings and Success wherein Paul seems to have had the pre-eminence who as Peter and all the rest of the Apostles every one singly and for himself had the care of all the Churches committed unto him thought it may be for the better discharge of their Duty ordinarily they divided their work as they found it necessary for them to apply themselves unto it in particular See 2 Cor. 11. And this equality between the Apostles is more than once insinuated by Paul and that with speciall reference unto Peter 1 Cor. 1. Gal. 1. 18 19. ch 2. 9. And is it not wonderfull that if this Assertion should not only be true but such a Truth as on which the whole faith of the Church was to be built that the Scripture should be utterly silent of it that it should give us no Rules about it no directions to use and improve it afford us no one instance of the exercise of the Power and Authority intimated no not one but that on the contrary it should lay down Principles exclusive of it Matth. 22. 25 26. Luk. 22. 26. And when it comes to make an enumeration of all the Offices appointed by Christ in his Church Eph. 4. 11. should pass over the Prince and his Office in silence on which all the rest were to depend You see what a Foundation you begin to build upon a meer
abode of Peter there never once mentions him in any of the Epistles which from thence he wrote unto the Churches and his fellow labourers though he doth remember very many others that were with him in the City 7. He asserts that in one of his Epistles from thence which as I think sufficiently proves that Peter was not then there for he saies plainly that in his triall he was forsaken by all men that no man stood by him which he mentions as their sin and prays for pardon for them Now no man can reasonably think that Peter was amongst the number of them whom he complained of 8. The Story is not consistent with what is expresly written of Peter by Luke in the Acts and Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians Paul was converted unto the faith about the 38 th year of Christ or 5 th after his Ascension After this he continued 3 years preaching the Gospel about Damascus and in Arabia In the 40 th or 41 st year of Christ he came to Jerusalem to conferr with Peter Gal. 1. which was the first of Claudius As yet therefore Peter was not removed out of Judaea 14 years after that is either after his first going up to Jerusalem or rather 14 years after his first Conversion he went up again to Jerusalem and found Peter still there which was in the 52 d year of Christ and the 13 th of laudius Or if you should take the date of the 14 years mentioned by him shorter by 5 or 6 years and reckon their beginning from the passion and Resurrection of Christ which is not improbable then this going up of Paul to Hierusalem will be found to be the same with his going up to the Councel from Antioch about the 6 th or rather 7 th year of Claudius Peter was then yet certainly at Hierusalem That is about the 46 th year of Christ some while after you would have the Church to be founded by him at Rome After this when Paul had taken a long progress through many Countreys wherein he must needs spend some years returning unto Antioch Act. 18. 22. he there again met with Peter Gal. 2. 11. Peter being yet still in the East to wards the end of the Raign of Claudius At Antioch where Paul found him if any of your Witnesses may be believed he abode 7 years Besides he was now very old and ready to lay down his mortality as our Lord had shewed him and in all probability after his remove from Antioch spent the residue of his dayes in the Eastern Dispersion of the Jews For 9 ly much of the Apostles work in Palestine among the Jews was now drawing to an end the elect being gathered in troubles were growing upon the Nation and Peter had as we observed before agreed with Paul to take the Care of the Circumcision of whom the greatest number by far excepting only Judaea its self was in Babylon and the Eastern Nations about it Now whether these and the like observations out of the Scripture concerning the Course of S t Peters life be not sufficient to out-ballance the Testimony of your disagreeing Witnesses impartial and unprejudiced men may judge For my part I do not intend to conclude peremptorily from them that Peter was never at Rome or never preached the Gospel there but that your Assertion of it is improbable and built upon very Questionable grounds that I suppose I may safely conclude And God forbid that we should once imagine the present faith of Christians or their Profession of Christian Religion to be built upon such uncertain Conjectures or to be concerned in them whether they be true or false Nothing can be spoken with more reproach unto it than to say that it stands in need of such supportment And yet if this one Supposition fail you all your building falls to the ground in a moment Never was so stupendous a fabrick raised on such imaginary foundations But that we may proceed Let us suppose this also that Peter was at Rome and preached the Gospel there What will thence follow unto your advantage what towards the settlement of any man in Religion or bringing us unto the Unity of faith the things enquired after He was at he preached the Gospel at Hierusalem Samaria Joppa Antioch Babylon and sundry other places and yet we find no such Consequences pleaded from thence as you urge from his Coming to Rome Wherefore you adde 1 V. That St Peter was Bishop of the Roman Church that he fixed his seat there and there he died In gathering up your Principles I follow the footsteps of Bellarmine Baronius and other great Champions of your Church so that you cannot except against the method of our proposals of them Now this Conclusion is built on these three Suppositions 1. That Peter had an Episcopal Office distinct from his Apostolical 2. That he was at Rome 3. That he fixed his Episcopal Sea there whereof the Second is very Questionable the First and Last are absolutely false So that the Conclusion its self must needs be a notable fundamentall Principle of Faith It is true and I shewed it before that the Apostles when they came into any Church did exercise all the Power of Bishops in and over that Church but not as Bishops but as Apostles As a King may in any of the Cities of his dominions where he comes exercise all the Authority of the Mayor or particular Governour of that place where he is which yet doth not make him become the Mayor of the place which would be a diminution of his royall Dignity No more did the Apostles become Local Bishops because of their exercising Episcopal Power in any particular Church by virtue of their Authority Apostolical wherein that other was included as hath been declared And Cui Bono to what purpose serves this fictitious Episcopacy All the Priviledges that you contend for the Assignation of unto Peter were beâ—â—owed upon him as an Apostle or as a believing disciple of Christ. As such he had those peculiar grants made unto him The Keys of the Kingdome of heaven were given unto him as an Apostle or according to S t Austin as a believer as such was he commanded to feed the sheep of Christ. It was unto him as an Apostle or a professing believer that Christ promised to build the Church on the faith that he had professed You reckon all these things among the priviledges of Peter the Apostle who as such is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or first in order As an Apostle he had the Care of all Churches committed unto him As an Apostle he was divinely inspired and enabled infallibly to reveal the mind of Christ. All these things belonged unto him as an Apostle and what Priviledge he could have besides as a Bishop neither you nor I can tell no more than you can when how or by whom he was called and ordained unto any such office all which we know well enough concerning
satisfaction the things which they do believe and let men be esteemed to beleive and to have attained degrees in the faith according as they are taught of God with an allowance for every ones measure of means light grace gifts which are not things in our own Power and we shall be nearer unto quietness than most men imagine When Christians had any unity is the world the Bible alone was thought to contain their Religion and every one endeavoured to learn the mind of God out of it both by their own endeavours and as they were instructed therein by their guides neither did they pursue this work with any other end but only that they might be strengthened in their faith and hope and learn to serve God and obey him that so they might come to the blessed enjoyment of him Nor will there ever I fear be again any Unity among them untill things are reduced to the same state and condition But among all the vanities that the minds of men are exercised with in this world there is none to be compared unto that of their hoping and endeavouring to bring all Persons that profess the Religion of Jesus Christ to acquiesce in the same opinions about all particulars which are any way determined to belong thereunto especially considering how endlesly they are multiplied and branched into instances such for ought appears the first Churches took little or no notice of nay neither knew nor understood any thing of them in the sense and termes wherin they are now proposed as a tessera of Communion among Christians In a word leave Christian Religion unto its primitive Liberty wherein it was beleived to be revealed of God and that Revelation of it to be contained in the Scripture which men searched and studied to become themselves and to teach others to be wise in the knowledg of God and living unto him and the most of the Contests that are in the world will quickly vanish and disappear But whilest every one hath a Confession a Way a Church and its Authority which must be imposed on all others or else he cryes to his nearest relations Lupis agnis quanta sortito obtigit Tecum mihi discordia est We may look for peace Moderation and Vnity when we are here no more and not sooner So that III. If those Theologicall Determinations that make up at this day amongst some men the greatest part of those Assertions Positions or Propositions which are called Articles of Faith or Truth which are not delivered in the words that the Spirit of God teacheth but in termes of Art and in Answer unto Rules and Notions which the world might happily without any great disadvantage been unacquainted withall unto this day had not Aristotle found them out or stumbled on them might be eliminated from the City of God and Communion of Christians and left for men to exercise their wits about who have nothing else to do and the Doctrine of Truth which is according unto Godliness left unto that Noble Heavenly Spirituall generous amplitude wherein it was delivered in the Scripture and beleived in the first Churches innumerable Causes of strife and Contentions would be taken away but ferri video meà gaudia ventis small hopes have I to see any such impression and consent to besall the minds of concerned men and yet I must confess I have not one jot more of the reuniting the Disciples of Christ in love and concord But most men that profess any thing of Divinity have learned it as an Art or humane Science out of the road compass and track where of they know nothing of the mind of God nay many scarce know the things in themselves and as they are to be believed which they are passing skilfull in as they are expressed in their arbitrary termes of Art which none almost understand but themselves And is it likely that such men who are not a few in the world will let go their skill and knowledge and with them their repntation and advantage and to sacrifice them all to the peace and agreement that we are seeking after Some learn their Divinity out of the late and Modern Schools both in the Reformed and Papall Church in both which a Science is proposed under that name consisting in a farrago of Credible Propositions asserted in termes suited unto that Philosophy that is variously predominant in them What a kind of Theology this hath praduced in the Papacy Agricola Erasmus Vives Jansenius with innumerable other Learned men of your own have sufficiently declared And that it hath any better success in the Reformed Churches many things which I shall not now instance in give me cause to doubt Some boast themselves to learn their Divinity from the Fathers and say they depart not from their sense and idiome of expression in what they beleive and profess But we find by experience that what for want of wisedom and judgement in themselves what for such reasons taken from the writings which they make their Oracles which I shall not insist upon much of the Divinity of some of these men consists in that which to avoid provocation I shall not express Whilest men are thus preing aged it will be very hard to prevail with them to think that the greatest part of their Divinity is such that Christian Religion either as to the matter or at least as to that mode wherein alone they have imbibed it is little or not at all concerned in nor will it be easie to perswade them that it is a Mystery layed up in the Scripture and all true Divinity a Wisedom in the Knowledg of that Mystery and skill to live unto God accordingly without which as I said before we shall have no Peace or agreement in this world Nobis curiositate opus non est post Jesum Christum nec inquisitione post Evangelium sayes Tertullian Curiosity after the Doctrine of Christ and Philosophicall inquisitions in Religion after the Gospel belongs not unto us As we are IV. It were well if Christians would but seriously consider what and how many things they are wherein their present Apprehensions of the mind and will of God do center and agree I mean as to the substance of them their nature and importance and how far they will lead men in the wayes of pleasing God and coming to the enjoyment of him Were not an endeavour to this purpose impeded by many mens importunate cryes of all or none as good nothing at all as not every thing and that in this or that way mode or fashion it might not a litlle conduce to the Peaâ—e of Christendom And I must acknowledg unto you that I think it is prejudice Carnall interest love of Power and present enjoyments with other Secular Advantages joyned with Pride Self-will and contempt of others that keep the professours of Christianity from conspiring to improve this Consideration But God help us we are all for Partyes and our own exact being in the right and therein
then that of any of them And therefore on what terms and reasons soever a man may relinquish the opinions and renounce the Communion of any other Church upon the same may he renounce the Communion and relinquish the Opinions of yours And if there be no reasons sufficiently cogent so to deal with any Church whatever I pray on what grounds do you proceed to perswade others to such a Course that they may joyn with you Dicisque facisque quod ipse Non Sani esse hominis non sanus juret Orestes To disintangle you out of this Labyrinth whereinto you have cast your self I shall desire you to observe that if the Lord Christ by his Word be the Supream Revealer of all Divine Truth and the Church that is any Church whatever be only the Ministerial proposer of it under and from him being to be regulated in all its propositions by his Revelation if it shall chance to propose that for Truth which is not by him revealed as it may do seeing it hath no security of being preserved from such failures but only in its attendance unto that Rule which it may neglect or corrupt A man in such a Case cannot discharge his Duty to the Supream Revealer without dissenting from the Ministerial proposer Nay if it be a Truth which is proposed and a man dissent from it because he is not convinced that it is revealed he is in no danger to be induced to question other Propositions which he knows to be so revealed his faith being built upon and resolved into that Revelation alone All that remains of your discourse lyes with its whole weight on this presumption because some men may either wilfully prevaricare from the Truth or be mistaken in their apprehensions of it and so dissent from a Church that teacheth the truth and wherein she so teacheth it without cause therefore no man may or ought to relinquish the errors of a Church which he is really and truly convinced by Scripture and solid reason suitable thereunto so to be An inference so wild and so destructive of all assurance in every thing that is knowable in the world that I wonder how your Interest could induce you to give any countenance unto it For if no man can certainly and infallibly know any thing by any way or means wherein some or other are ignorantly or wilfully mistaken we must bid adiew for ever to the certain knowledge of any thing in this world And how slightly soever you are pleased to speak of Scripture Light Spirit and Reason they are the proper names of the wayes and helps that God hath graciously given to the sons of men to come to the knowledge of himself And if the Scripture by the assistance of the Spirit of God and the light unto it communicated unto men by him be not sufficient to lead them in the use and improvement of their Reason unto the saving knowledge of the will of God and that assurance therein which may be a firm foundation of acceptable obedience unto him they must be content to go without it for other wayes and means of it there are none But this is your manner of dealing with us All other Churches must be sleighted and relinquished the means appointed and sanctified by God himself to bring us unto the knowledge of and settlement in the Truth must be rejected that all men may be brought to a fanatical unreasonable resignation of their faith to you and your Church if this be not done men may with as good reason renounce Truth as Error and after they have rejected one error be inclined to cast off all that Truth for the sake whereof that error was rejected by them And I know not what other inconveniences and mischiefs will follow It must needs be well for you that you are Gallinae filius albae Seeing all others are Viles pulli nati infelicibus ovis Your only misadventure is that you are fallen into somewhat an unhappy age wheréin men are hard-hearted and will not give away their Faith and Reason to every one that can take the confidence to beg them at their hands But you will now prove by instances that if a man deny any thing that your Church proposeth he may with as good reason deny every Truth whatever I shall follow you through them and consider what in your matter or manner of proposal is worthy that serious perusal of them which you so much desire To begin See if the Quakers deny not as resolutely the regenerating power of Baptisme as you the efficacy of Absolution See if the Presbyterians do not with as much reason evacuate the Prelacy of Protestants as they the Papacy All things it seems are alike Truth and Error and may with the same reason be opposed and rejected And because some men renounce errors others may on as good grounds renounce the Truth and oppose it with as solid and cogent reasons The Scripture it seems is of no use to direct guide or settle men in these things that relate to the worship and knowledge of God What a strange dream hath the Church of God been in from the dayes of Moses if this be so Hitherto it hath been thought that what the Scripture teacheth in these things turned the scales and made the embracement of it reasonable as the rejection of them the contrary As the woman said to Joab They were wont to speak in old time saying they shall surely ask counsel at Abel and so they ended the matter They said in old time concerning these things To the Law and the Testimonies search the Scriptures and so they ended the matter But it seems tempora mutantur and that now Truth and Falsehood are equally probable having the same grounds the same evidences Quis leget haec min tu istud ais Do you think to be believed in these incredible figments fit to bear a part in the stories of Vlysses unto Alcinous Yet you proceed See if the Socinian Arguments against the Trinity be not as strong as yours against the Eucharist But where did you ever read any Arguments of ours against the Eucharist Have you a dispensation to say what you please for the promotion of the Catholick Cause Are not the Arguments you intend indeed rather for the Eucharist then against it Arguments to vindicate the nature of that holy Eucharistical Ordinance and to preserve it from the manifold abuses that you and your Church do put upon it That is they are arguments against your Transubstantiation and proper sacrifice that you intend And will you now say that the Arguments of the Socinians against the Trinity the great fundamental Article of our Prosession plainly taught in the Scripture and constantly believed by the Church of all Ages are of equal force and validity with those used against your Transubstantiation and Sacrifice of the Mass things never mentioned no not once in the whole Scripture never heard of nor believed by the Church of old and
destructive in your reception unto all that reason and sense whereby we are and know that we are men and live But suppose your prejudice and partial addiction unto your way and faction may be allowed to countenance you in this monstrous comparing and coupling of things together like his who Mortua jungehat corpora vivis is your inference from your enquiry any other but this that the Scripture setting aside the Authority of your Church is of no use to instruct men in the Truth 〈◊〉 all things are alike uncertain unto all And 〈◊〉 you farther manifest to be your meaning in your following enquiries See say you if the Jew do not with as much plaufibility deride Christ as you his Church And would you could see what it is to be a zealot in a faction or would learn to deal candidly and honestly in things wherein your own and the souls of other men are concerned Who is it amongst us that derides the Church of Christ Did Elijah deride the Temple at Jerusalem when he opposed the Priests of Baal or must every one presently be judged to deride the Church of Christ who opposeth the corruptions that the Roman faction have endeavoured to bring into that part of it wherein for some ages they have prevailed What Plausibility yon have found out in the Jews derision of Christ I know not I know some that are as conversant in their writings at least as you seem to have been who affirm that your arguings and revilings are utterly destitute of all plausibility and tolerable pretence But men must have leave to say what they please when they will be talking of they know not what as is the case with you when by any chance you stumble on the Jews or their concernments This is that which for the present you would perswade men unto That the Arguments of the Jews against Christ are as good as those of Protestants against your Church credat Apella Of the same nature with these is the remainder of your Instances and Queries You suppose that a man may have as good reasons for the denyal of Hell as Purgatory of Gods Providence and the Souls Immortality as of any piece of Popery and then may not want appearing incongruities tautologies improbabilities to disenable all Holy Writ at once This is the condition of the man who disbelieves any thing proposed by your Church nor in that state is he capable of any relief Fluctuate he must in all uncertainties Truth and error are all one unto him and he hath as good grounds for the one as the other But Sir pray what serves the Scripture for all this while Will it afford a man no Light no Guidance no Direction Was this quite out of your mind or did you presume your Reader would not once cast his thoughts towards it for his relief in that maze of uncertainties which you endeavour to cast him into or dare you manage such an impeachment of the wisdom and goodness of God as to affirm that that Revelation of himself which he hath graciously afforded unto men to reach them the knowledge of himself and to bring them to settlement and assurance therein is of no use or validity to any such purpose The Holy Ghost tells us that the Scripture is profitable for doctrine and instruction able to make the man of God perfect and us all wise unto salvation that the sure Word of Prophecy where unto he commands us to attend is a light shining in a dark place directs us to search into it that we may come to the acknowledgement of the Truth sending us unto it for our settlement affirming that they who speak not according to the Law and the Testimonies have no light in them He assures us that the word of God is a light unto ou◠feet and his Law perfect converting the soul That it is able to build us up and to give us an inheritance among all them that are sanctified that the things in it are written that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing we may have life through his name See also Luke 16. 29 31. Psal. 19. 18. 2 Pet. 1 19. John 5. 39. Rom. 15. 4. Heb. 4. 12. Is there no truth in all this and much more that is affirmed to the same purpose or are you surprized with this mention of it as Caesar Borgia was with his sickness at the death of his father Pope Alexander which spoiled all his designs and made him cry that he had never thought of it and so had not provided against it Do you not know that a volume might be filled with Testimonies of antient fathers bearing witness to the sufficiency and efficacy of the Scripture for the settlement of the minds of men in the knowledge of God and his worship Doth not the experience of all Ages of all places in the world render your Sophistry contemptible are there not were there not millions of Christians alwayes who either knew not or regarded not or openly rejected the Authority of your Church and disbelieved many of her present proposals who yet were and are stedfast and in moveable in the faith of Christ and willingly seal the Truth of it with their dearest blood But if neither the Testimony of God himself in the Scriptures nor the concurrent suffrage of the antient Church nor the experience of to many thousands of the Disciples of Christ is of any moment with you I hope you will not take it amiss if I look upon you as one giving in your self as signal an Instance of the power of prejudice and partial addiction to a party and interest as a man can well meet withall in the world This discourse you tell me in your close you have bestowed upon me in a way of supererogation wherein you deal with us as you do with God himself The Duties he expresly by his commands requireth at your hands you pass by without so much as takeing notice of some of them and others as those of the second Command you openly reject offering him somewhat of your own that he doth not require by the way as you barbarously call it of Supererogation and so here you have passed over in silence that which was incumbent on you to have replyed unto if you had not a mind vadimonium deserere to give over the defence of that Cause you had undertaken and in the room thereof substitute this needless and useless diversion by the way as you say of Supererogation But yet because you were to free of your Charity before you had payed your debts as to bestow it upon me I was not unwilling to require your kindness and have therefore sent it you back again with that acknowledgement of your favour where with it is now attended CHAP. 13. Faith and Charity of Roman Catholicks YOur following Discourse pag. 44 45. is spent partly in the Commendation of your Fiat Lux and the Metaphysical abstracted scourses of
your selves to wave I should have wholly passed by this discourse unto which no occasion was administred in the Animadversions but now as you have hanâ—dled the matter unless I would have it taken for granted that the Principles of the Roman Church are more suited unto the establishment and promotion of the interest and Soveraignty of Kings and other supream Magistrates and in particular the Kings of these Nations then those of Protestants which in Truth I do not believe I must of necessity make a little further enquiry into your Discourse And I desire your pardon if in my so doing any thing be spoken that suits not so well your interest and designs neither expecting nor desiring any if ought be delivered by me not according to Truth To make our way the more clear some of the ambiguous expressions which you make use of to cloud and hide your intention in your enquiry after the Head of the Church must be explained 1. By the Church you understand not this or that particular Church not the Church of this of that Nation Kingdom or Countrey but the whole Catholick Church throughout the world And when you have explained your self to this purpose you endeavour by six Arguments no less p. 67 68. to prove that no King ever was or can be Head of it He said well of old In causa facili quemvis licet esse disertum I wonder you contented your self to give us six Reasons only and that you proceeded not at least unto the high hills of eighteenthly and nineteenthly that you talk of in your Fiat Lux where you scoff at the preaching of Presbyterians it may be you will scarely ever obtain such another opportunity of shewing the fertility of your invention So did he florish who thought himself secure from adversaries Caâ—ut altum in praelia tollit Ostenditque humeros latos alternaque jactat Brachia protendens verberat ictibus auras But you do like him you only beat the ayre Do you think any man was ever so distempered as to dream that any King whatever could be the absolute Head of the whole Catholick Church of Christ we no more think any King in any sence to be the Head of the Catholick Church then we think the Pope so to be The Roman Empire was at its hight and glory when first Christianity set forth in the world and had extended its bounds beyond those of any Kingdom that arose before it or that hath since succeeded unto it And yet within a very few years after the Resurrection of Christ the Gospel had diffused it self beyond the limits of that Empire among the Parthians and Indians and unto Britannorum Romanis inaccessa loca as Tertullian calls them Now none ever supposed that any King had power or Authority of any sort in reference unto the Church or any members of it without or beyond the precise limits of his own Dominions The Enquiry we have under Consideration about the Power of Kings and the obedience due unto them in Ecclesiastical things is limited absolutely unto their own Kingdoms and unto those of their subjects which are Christians in them And this Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu concussa quiescunt A little observation of this one known and granted Principle renders not only your six Reasons altogether useless but surpersedes also a great part of your Rhetorick which under the ambiguity of that expression you display in your whole Discourse Secondly You pleasantly lead about your unwary Reader with the ambiguity of the other term the Head Hence p. 58. you fall into a great exclamation against Protestants that acknowledging the King to be the Head of the Church they do not supplicate unto him and acquiesce in his judgement in Religious affairs as if ever any Protestant acknowledged any King or any mortal man to be such an Head of the Church as you fancy to your selves in whose determinations in Religion all men are bound spiritually and as to their eternal concernments to acquiesce and that not because they are true according to the Scripture but because they are his Such an Head you make the Pope such an one on earth all Procestants deny which evacuates your whole Discourse to that purpose p. 58 59. It is true in opposition unto your Papal claim of Authority and Jurisdiction over the subjects of this Kingdom Protestants do assert the King to be so Head of the Church within his own Realms and Dommions as that he is by Gods appointment the sole fountain and spring amongst men of all Authority and Power to be exercised over the Persons of his subjects in matters of external cognizance and order being no way obnoxious to the direction supervisorship and superintendency of any other in particular not of the Pope He is not only the only striker as you phrase it in his Kingdoms but the only Protector under God of all his subjects and the only Distributor of Justice in rewards and punishments unto them not depending in the administration of the one or other on the determinations or orders of your Pope or Church Not that any of them do use absolutely that expression of Head of the Church but that they ascribe unto him all Authority that ought or can be exercised in his Dominions over any of his Subjects whither in things Civil or Ecclesiastical that are not meerly Spiritual and to be ministerially ordered in obedience unto Christ Jesus And that you may the better see what it is that Protestants ascribe unto the King and to every King that is Absolutely supream as his Majesty is in his own Dominions and withall how exceeding vain your unreasonable reproach is which you cast upon them for not giving themselves up unto an absolute acquiescency in humane determinations as meerly such on pretence that they proceed from the Head of the Church I shall give you a brief account of their thoughts in this whole matter First They say that the King is the supream Governor over all Persons whatever within his Realms and Dominions none being exempted on any account from subjection unto his Regal Authority How well you approve of this Proposition in the great astignations you pretend unto Kingly power we shall afterwards enquire Protestants found their perswasion in this matter on the Authority of the Scripture both Old Testament and New and the very Principles constituting Soveraign Power amongst men You speak fair to Kings but at first dash exempt a considerable number of their born subjects owing them indispensible natural Allegiance from their jurisdiction Or this sort are the Clergy But the Kings of Judah of old were not of your mind Solomon certainly thought Abiathar though High Priest subject to his Royal Authority when he denounced against him a sentence of death and actually deposed him from the Priest hood The like course did his successors proceed in For neither had God in the first provision he made for a
that they would like it under a new dress which the old name might have startled them from the Consideration of But Mass or Messach let it be as you please we shall now consider what it is that you offer afresh concerning it and hear you speak out your own words Thus you say p. 81. Having laughed at my admiration of Catholick Service you carp at me for saying that the Christians were never called together to hear a Sermon to convince me you bring some places out of St. Pauls Epistles and the Acts which commend the Ministry of the Word This indeed is your usual way of refuting my Speeches You flourish copiously in that which is not at all against me and never apply it to my words least it should appear as it is impertinent I deny not that Converts were further instructed or that the preaching of Gods Word is good and usefull but that which I say is that Primitive Christians were never called together for that end as the great work of their Christianity This I have clearly proved Well Sir without retorsion which just indignation against this unhandsome management of a desperate Cause is ready to suggest be pleased to take a little view of your own words once more pag. 279. you tell us that the Apostles and Apostolical Christians placed their Religion not in hearing or making Sermons FOR THEY HAD NONE but in attending to their Christian Lyturgie and the Sermons mentioned in the Acts were made to the Jews and Pagans for their Conversion not to any Christians at all Could I now take any other course to confute these false and impious Assertions then what I did in the Animadversions I proved unto you that Sermons were made unto Christians by the Apostles for their edification that order is given by them for the instant preaching of the Word in and unto the Churches unto the end of the world and that those are by them signally commended who laboured in that work and what can be spoken more directly to the confutation of your Assertion You would now shrowd your self under the ambiguity of that expression the great work of their Christianity which yet you make no use of in your Fiat The words there from which you would get countenance unto your present evasion are these Nowhere was ever Sermon made to formal Christians either by St. Peter or Paul or any other as the work of their Religion that they came together for nor did the Christians ever dream of serving God after their Conversion by any such means but ONLY by the Eucharist or Liturgy Here is somewhat of the work of their Religion which they came together for nothing of the great work of their Christianity Now that preaching was a work of their Religion that they came together for though not the only work of it noâ— only end for which they so convened which no man ever dreamed that it was and that the Primitive Christians did by and in that work serve God hath been proved unto you from the Scripture And all Antiquity with the whole story of the Church gives attestation to the same Truth Sir it were far more honourable for you to renounce a false and scandalous Assertion when you are convinced that such it is then to seek to palliate it and to secure your self by such unhansome evasions Preaching of the word unto believers is an Ordinance of Christ and that of indispensible necessity unto their edification or growth in Grace and knowledge which he requireth of them In the practice of this ordinance were the Apostles themselves sedulous and commanded others so to be So were they in the Primitive following times as you may learn from the account given us of Church meetings by Justin Martyr and Tertullian in their Apologies and all that have transmitted any thing unto Posterity concerning their Assemblies For this end to hear the word preached Christians came together not only or solely or exclusively to the administration of other Ordinances but as to a part of that worship which God required at their hands and wherein no small of their spiritual advantage was enwrapped To deny this as you do in your Fiat is to deny that the Sun shines at noon day and to endeavour to dig up the very roots of Pâ—ety Knowledge and all Christianity to what ends and purposes and for the enthroning of what other thing in your room let all indifferent men judge And I shall take leave to say that to my best observation I never met with an Assertion in any Author of what Religion so ever more remote from truth sobriety and modesty then that of yours in your Fiat pag. 275. Nor did the Primitive Christians for 300. years ever hear a Sermon made unto them upon a Text but meerly flocked together at their Priests appointment unto their Messachs This I say is so loudly and notoriously untrue and so known to be so to all that have ever looked into the stories of those times that I am amazed at your confidence in the publishing of it It may be you will hope to shelter your self under the ambiguity of that expression made unto them upon a text Supposing that an instance cannot be given of that mode of preaching wherein some â—ertain Text is read at the entrance of a Sermon and principally insisted upon But this Fig leaf will not cover you from the just Censure of knowing men For 1. Their following adversative but meerly is perfectly exclusive of all preaching be it of what Mode it will be 2. The reading of one certain Text before Preaching is not necessary unto it but all preaching is and ever was upon some Text or Texts that is it consisted in the explication and application of the word of God that is some part of portion of it 3. Whereas it is certain that our Saviour himself preached on a Text Luk. 4. 17 18 19 20 21. as also did his Apostles Act. 8. 35. and the Fathers of the following Ages it is sufficiently evident that that was also the constant mode of preaching in the first 300. years as may be made good in the instance of Origen and sundry others You go on and except against me for saying that we hear nothing of your Sacrifice of the Mass in the Scripture and say you will neither hear nor see say you the passion of our Lord is our Christian Sacrifice do not I say sâ— too but that this incruent Sacrifice was instituted by the same Lord before his death to figure out daily before our eyes that passion of his which was then approaching in commemoration of his death so long as the world should last I must desire you to stay here a little This Sacrifice you make the main of Christian Religion Protestants for the want of it you esteem to have no Religion at all We must therefore consider what it is that you intend by it for I suppose you would not have us accept of we know not
what and you seem both in your Fiat and in your Epistola to obscure it as much as you are able 1. You call it an incruent Sacrifice which 1. Shews only what it is not and that in one only instance which is a very lame description of any thing and this also may be affirmed of any Metaphorical Sacrifice what ever as offering unto God the calves of our lips it is an incruent Sacrifice 2. Your Expression implyes a contradiction Every proper Propitiatory Sacrifice was bloody and an incruent proper Sacrifice such as you would have this to be is a proper improper Propitiatory Sacrifice 2. You say it was instituted by our Lord to figure out his Passion 1. This is a weighty proof of what you have in hand being the only thing to be proved 2. I suppose in the examination of it it will appear that you Sacrifice that very body and blood of Christ in your own conceits which himself offered unto God and how you can make any thing to be a figure of it self as yet I do not perfectly understand 3. That the Lord Christ appointed the Sacrament of his body and blood and our Eucharistical Sacrifice therein to be a Commemoration of his death and Passion is the Doctrine of Protestants where with your Sacrifice hath a perfect inconsistency as we shall find in the Consideration of it This is the substance of what you are pleased to acquaint us with about this great business of our Religion But because you shall perceive that it was not without good grounds and reasons that I affirmed the Scripture to be utterly silent of this that you make the great work of Christianity I shall a little further enquire after the nature of it that I mean which by you it is fancied to be for it is a mere creature of your own imagination 1. You alwayes contend that it is a proper Sacrifice which you intend The first Canon of your Council accurseth them who deny it to be verum proprium Sacrificium a True and proper Sacrifice wherein as they say before Christus inimolatur Christ is Sacrificed Many things in the New Testament in respect of their Analogy unto the Institutions of the old are called Sacrifices even almost all spiritual actions that are acceptable unto God in Christ. The preaching of the Gospel unto the conversion of sinners is termed Sacrificing Rom. 15. 16. So is Faith it self Phil. 2. 17. So Prayers and Thanksgiving are an oblation Heb. 5. 7. chap. 13. 15. and good works are called Sacrifices Heb. 13. 16. Phil. 4. 18. And our whole Christian Obedience is intimated by Peter so to be In the Sacrament of the Eucharist it is that you seek for your Sacrifice And if you would be contented to call it and esteem it so upon the account of its comprizing some of the things before mentioned or meerly as a spiritual action appointed by God and acceptable unto him there would be an end of this contest But you must have it a proper Sacrifice like those of Aaron of old not a remembrance of the Sacrifice of Christ but a Sacrifice of Christ himself wherein Christus immolatur Christ is sacrificed as the Council speaks 2. The Secrifices of old were of two sorts 1. Eucharistical or Oblations of the fruits of the earth or other things whereby the Sacrificers acknowledged God as the Lord and Author of all good things and mercies with thanksgiving 2. Propitiatory for the atoning of God the reconciling him unto sinners for the turning away of his wrath and the impetration of the pardon of sin This was done typically and Sacramentally by virtue of their respect unto the oblation of Christ by the old bloody Sacrifices of the Law really and effectually by that bloody Sacrifice which the Lord Jesus Christ once offered for all Now because in the Sacrament of the Eucharist it is our Duty to offer up unto God our thankeful prayers for his unspeakable love in sending his only Son to dye for us we do not contend with any who on that accont and with respect unto that peculiar act of our duty in it shall call it an Eucharistical Sacrifice yea affirm it so to be But you will have it a propitiatory Sacrifice a Sacrifice of Atonement like that made by Christ himself a Sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead making reconciliation with God obtaining Pardon of sin and eternal life things peculiar to the one Sacrifice of Christ in his death and passion 3. Though you usually exclude the communion from it wherein you do wisely that it may have no affinity with the Institution of Christ yet you do not precisely determine your Sacrifice unto any one act or action in your Mass but make it comprize the whole with the manner of its celebration from the first setting forth of the Elements of bread and wine mixed with water unto the end of the Offertory after their Transubstantiation and religious adoration thereupon and their offering up unto God the body and blood of Christ under the accidents of bread and wine The presentation of the bread and wine you would prove to belong unto your Sacrifice from the example of Melchisedeck Your Transubstantiation is also of the essence of it for it is required in a Sacrifice sayes your Bellarmine that the sensible thing to be offered unto God be changed and plainly destroyed de Miss Lib. 1. cap. 2. which you esteem the substance of your bread and wine to be in your Transubstantiation Your religious adoration of the consecrated â—â—st belongs also unto it for that in the Canon of the Mass immediately ensues your Transubstantiating Consecration before the oblation it self and so must necessarily be a part of your Sacrifice Your offering up unto God of Jesus Christ praying him to accept of him at the Priests hands supra quae propitio sereno vultu respicere digneris accepta habere belongs also unto it So doth your direction of it to the propitiating of God and the expiation of the sins of the Quick and the Dead The Ceremonies also wherewith your Masse is celebrated as I suppose most of them belong to your Sacrifice and those who believe them not to be duties of Piety are accursed by your Council of Trent The Priests eating of the Host belongs to the Sacrifice yea saith Bellarmine it is pars essentialis Sacrificii though not tota essentia an essential part of the Sacrifice though the whole Essence of it doth not consist therein I know you are at a great loss and variance among your selves to find out what it is that is properly your Sacrifice or wherein the essence of it doth consist Some of your discrepant opinions are given us by your Azorius Lib. 10. Chap. 19. Sunt saith he qui putant rationem sacrificii totam constitui in verbis precibus ceremoniis ritibus qui in consâ—oratione adhibentur eo quod Sacrificii ratio inquiunt nequit in
ipsa consecratione consistere quin è contrario consecratio ad rationem Sacramenti potius quam ad naturam Sacrificii pertinet Alii existimant Sacrificii rationem tribus Sacerdotis actionibus constare consecratione oblatione sumptione Alii quidem seâ—sere ad rationem hujus Sacrificii quat uor imo quinque actiones concurrere Consecrationem oblationem fractionem sumptionem Alii rationem Sâ—crificii ponunt in duobus actibus consecratione oblatione Alii constituunt totam rationem Sacrificii in 〈◊〉 actione viz. Consecratione There are who think the nature of the Sacrifice to consist in the words rayers ceremonies and rites which are used in the Consecration because say they the nature of the Sacrifice cannot consist in the Consecration it self which rather belongs unto the nature of a Sacrament then of a Sacrifice Others think that the Sacrifice consists in three actions of the Priest Consecration Oblation and Sumption or receiving of the Host. Others in four or five as Consecration Oblation Fraction Sumption Others in two Consecration and Oblation and some in one Consecration And is not this a brave business to impose on the Consciences of all men when you know not your selves what it is that you would so impose A Sacrifice must be believed and they are all accursed by you that believe it not but what the Sacrifice is and wherein it doth consist you cannot tell And an easie matter it were to manifest that all the particulars which you assign as those that either belong necessarily unto the integrity of a Sacrifice or those wherein some of you or any of you would have its essence to consist are indeed of no such nature or importance but that is not my present business I am only enquiring what your Sacrifice is according unto you own sense and imagination And that we may not mistake I shall set down such a general description of it as the Canon of the Mass the general rubrick of the Missal the rites and cautels of its celebration will afford unto us Now in these it is represented as a sacred action wherein a proper Priest or Sacrificer arrayed with various consecrated attire standing at the Altar taketh bread and wine about which he useth great variety of â—ostures and gestures inclinations bowings kneelings stretching out and gathering in his arms with a multitude of Crossings at the end and in the midst of his pronunciation of certain words of Scripture turns them into the real natural body and blood of Christ the Son of God worshiping them so converted with religious adoration shewing them to the people for the same purpose and then offering that body and blood unto God praying for his acceptance of them so offered and that it may be available for the living and the dead for the pardoning of their sins and saving of their souls after which he takes that body of Christ so made worshipped and offered and eats and deavours it by all which Christ is truly and properly Sacrificed This is the Sacrifice of your Church wherein as you inform us the main of your Devotion and Worship doth consist Of this Sacrifice I told you formerly the Scripture is silent and I now add that so also is Antiquity You cannot produce any one approved writer for the space of 600. years that gives testimony to this your Sacrifice For what ever florish you may make with the ambiguity of the word Sacrifice which we cleared before your Transubstantion and other things asserted by you to belong unto the integrity if not the Essence of your Sacrifice are strangers unto Antiquity as hath been lately proved unto you and will no doubt be yet further confirmed so to be I told you as you observe that this Sacrifice is an utter stranger to Scripture as also that it is inconsistent with what is therein delivered The Apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews plainly affirms that the Sacrifice of the Church of the Christians is but one and that once offered for all whereas those of the Jews by reason of their imperfection were often repeated which you choose out to reply unto and say It is true the Sacrifice of our Lords Passion of which the Apostle in that whole discourse intends only to treat in opposition unto that of Bulls and goats was so done but once that it could not be done twice But as the Sacrifices of the Old Law were instituted by Almighty God to be often iterated before the Passion of the Messias for a continual exercise of Religion so did the same Lord for the very same purpose institute another to be iterated after his death unto which it was to have reference when it should be past as the former had to the same death when it was to come So you But first This begs the Question for you only repeat and say that such a Sacrifice was institued by Christ which you know is by us utterly denyed 2. It plainly contradicts the Apostle and overthrows his whole argument and design 1. It contradicts him in express terms for whereas he sayes not only that Christ once offered himself but also that he was once offered for all that is no more to be offered you affirm that he is often offered and that every day 2. His design is to demonstrate the excellency of the Condition of the Church of the New Testament and the worship of God therein above that of the Old And this he proves to consist here in a special manner that they had many Sacrifices which were of necessity to be reiterated because they could not take away sin for saith he if they could then should they not have been repeated nor would there have been need of any other Sacrifice But now saith he this is done by the one Sacrifice of Christ which hath so taken away sin as that it hath made the repetition of its self or the institution of any other Sacrifice needless and therefore we have no more but that one and that one once performed Now unless you will deny the Apostles Assertions either 1. That if one Sacrifice can take away sin there is no need of another or 2. That the one Sacrifice of Christ did perfectly take away sin as to Attonement and also 3. assert that the condition of the Gospel Church is still the same with that of the Jews and that we have need of a Sacrifice to be repeated not only as theirs was year by year from whence he argues the imperfection of the greatest solemn Sacrifice of Expiation but day by day with a further and greater weakness repetition in the judgement of the Apostle being an evidence thereof there will be no place left for your Sacrifice that is your main worship belongs not to the Church of God at all 4. You pretend that in this worship Christ himself is Sacrificed unto God but incruenter and without suffering but the Apostle plainly tells us that if he be often offered he must often
that of Christ himself is very apt to take off the minds and confidence of men from that one Sacrifice performed so long ago which they have not seen and to fix them on that which their eyes daily look upon as the praesens numen that they can immediately apply themselves unto Thus they fear that insensibly all faith of the true Propitiation wrought by Christ is obliterated and that which they think an Idol set up in the room of it 10. And which further troubles them they are jealous that by this your fiction you quite overthrow the Testament of Christ which certainly no man ought to endeavour the disannulling of For whereas in this Sacrament believers come to receive from him the great Legacy of his body and blood with all the fruits of his death and Passion you direct them to be offering and Sacrificing of them unto God which quite alters the Will of our great Testator And very many other things there are wherein your Countreymen affirm that your Sacrifice is contrary to the faith wherein from Scripture they have been instructed and that in things of the greatest importance to their Consolation here and Salvation hereafter II. Neither is this all your request also lies cross to your Reason no less then to your Faith For your Sacrifice cannot be performed without a Supposition of a change of the substance of the bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ and the substance of that body and blood in every consecrated Host under the species of Bread and Wine Christ himself alive being in every Host and every particle of it Hence many things they say ensue which no man can possibly admit of without offering violence unto the main Principles of that Reason whereby we are distinguished from the beasts that perish Some few of them may be instanced in 1. Accidents subsisting without a Subject follows hence necessarily in the first place so that there should be whiteness and nothing white length and nothing long bredth and nothing broad weight and nothing heavy For all these accidents of Bread remain when you would have them say that the bread is gone so that there is left a white sweet long broad heavy nothing This your Countreymen cannot understand 2. Besides they say you hereby teach them that one and the same body of Christ which is in heaven is also on the Altar not by an impletion of the whole space between heaven and earth that some part of it should be in heaven and some on earth but that the one body which is in heaven and whilest it is there is also on the Altar in the Accidents of Bread which upon the matter is that one and the same body is two yea an hundred or a thousand according as in the Mass you are pleased to multiply it Now that one and the same body should be locally divided or separated from its self that whilest that one body is on the Altar that other one body which is the same should be in heaven your Countreymen think to imply a Contradiction 3. And so also they do that a body should be in any place and yet not as a body but as a Spirit For whereas you say that whole Christ is contained under each Species of Bread and Wine and under every the most minute part of either Species as your Council speaks you make the body of Christ to be whole in the whole and whole in every part when the very nature of a body requires that it have partes extra partes its parts distinct from one another and those occupying their distinct particular places But you make the body of Christ neither to be compassed in nor to fill the place wherein it is that is to be in a place and not to be in a place For if it be a body and be under the Species of bread and wine upon the Altar it is in a place and if it be not comprehended in that space where it is and doth fill it it is not in a place and therefore is there and is not there at the same time 4. And moreover we all know that the Consecrated wafer bears no proportion to the true natural body of Christ and yet this is said to be contained under that So that the body contained is much greater and farther extended then the body that contains it or the space wherein it is for it is so under the Host as not to be elsewhere unless in another Host. 5. Nâ—y it is in every minute part of the Host which multiplies contradictions in your Assertion 6. Of the same nature is it that you are forced to feign the same body in 10000. distant places at the same time and that with all contradictory adjuncts and affections Now your Countreymen think that these and innumerable other consequences of your Transubstantiation which you presuppose to your Sacrâ—fice or rather make it a principal part thereof are such as overthrow the whole order of nature and being of things and leave nothing certain among the Sons of men III. Their sense is equally engaged against you with their Reason Your Host is visible tangible gustible when they see it they see bread when they feel it they feel bread when they taste it they taste bread and yet you tell them it is not bread whom shall they believe if things be not as they see them feel them taste them it may be they are not men nor do go on their feet but are deceived in all these things and suppose they see perceive and understand what they do not You tell them indeed that the bread is changed into the body of Christ that body that was born of the blessed Virgin and was crucified at Jerusalem that all taste length breadth weight is taken away from it and that the taste and weight of the bread is continued which are the things they see feel and taste but they likewise tell you that your perswasion is an inveterate prejudice which you have blindly captivated your minds unto and that if you would but give your selves the liberty of exercising any reflex thoughts upon your own acts you would find that upon the suppositions you proceed on you have not any just grounds to conclude your selves to be living men For you teach men to deny and question all that from Reason or Sense you can insist upon to prove that so you are Ou these and the like accounts the Encomiums you give of your Sacrifice will scarce prevail with your Countreymen to relinquish all the worship of God wherein they find daily comfort and advantage to their souls for the embracement of it CHAP. 20. Of the Blessed Virgin UNto the sixteenth Chapter of the Animadversions directed to your Paragraph of the Blessed Virgin you can find it seems nothing to say and therefore betake your self to clamorous revilings All that you say in your Fiat on this head is but an heap of false accusations
Scripture it self wherein your Images making and Image worship is as fully condemned as it is possible any superstition or Idolatry should be Your present loose discourses whereby you endeavour to possess the minds of unwary men that you do not do that which indeed you do every day and which almost all the world know that you do and which you curse others for not doing will not with considering persons redound at all unto your advantage 2. That you may the better also discern what is incumbent on you and expected from you the next time you talk of figures I shall make bold to mind you of what is the Doctrine of the chief Masters and Instructors of your Church from whence certainly we may better learn what the Doctrine and practice of it is then from one who discovers enough in what he sayes and writes to keep us from laying any great weight on his authority Now I confess that you do in this as in sundry other points of your Religion give us an egregious specimen of that consent and unity among your selves which you so frequently boast of Raphael de Torre in his Sum. Relig. Quaest. 94. Artic. â— disput 6. dub 5. gives us an account of five several opinions maintained by your Doctor in this matter of all which he rejects that only of Durand and some others affirming that images are not worshipped properly but only improperly and abusively as rash and savouring of heresie The same doth Bellarmine also and the Truth is that that opinion of Durrand Gerson and same others is plainly condemned by the Tridentine Decree as hath been already declared The Authors of the other four opinions though they differ among themselves and have several digladiations about sâ—me expressions and distinctions framed meerly in theâ—r own imaginations agree well enough that Images are religiously to be worshipped Worshipped religiously they are to be but whither per se and absolutely directly and ultimately whither with the same kind of worship wherewith that is to be worshipped which they represent they are not so fully agreed as might be desired in a matter of this importance For it is justly to be feared that whilest your Doctors are wrangling your people are committing as gross Idolatry as any of the Heathen were guilty of In the mean time the most prevalent Opinion of your Doctors is that of Thomas and his followers that images are to be adored with the same kind of worship wherewith that which they represent is to be worshipped And therefore whereas the Lord Christ is to be worshipped with Latria that which is peculiar in your judgement to God alone it follows saith he that his image is to be worshipped with the same worship also And as some of your learned men do boast that this indeed is the only approved opinion in this matter in your Church so the truth is if you will speak congruously and at any consistency with your selves it must be so For whereas you lay the foundation of all your worship of them be it of what fort it will in that figment that the honour which is done to the image redounds unto him whose image it is if the honour done to the image be of an inferior sort and kind unto that which is due unto the exemplar of it by referring that honour thereunto you debase and dishonour it by ascribing less unto it then is its due If then you intend to answer just expectation in this matter the next time you speak of figures pray consider what your Thomas teacheth as the Doctrine of your Church 3. p. q. 25. ae 3. which Azorius sayes is the constant judgement of Divines lib. 9. cap. 6. As also the exposition of the Tridentine Decree by Suarez Tom. 1. d. 54. § 4. Vasquez Costerus Bellarmine and others And 3. You may do well to consider the practice and usage of your Catholick people all the world over especially in those places where you have preserved them from being disturbed in their Devotion by the Arguments and exceptions of Protestants as also the direction that is given them for the exercise of their Devotion in that prescription of Rites and prayers which is afforded unto them Is not your bowing kneeling creeping kissing offering singing praying to the Cross and images notorious yea your placing your trust and confidence in them Yea have you omitted any of the abominations of the heathen that you have not acted over again to provoke the Lord to anger And 4. Do you think to relieve them from the guilt of Idolatry by a company of distinctions which neither they nor you understand The next time you see one of your Catholicks worshipping an image upon his knees I pray go to him and tell him that he must worship the Image with dulia or superdulia but not with latria or if with latria yet not by its self and simply but after a sort analogically and reductively or that he is about a double worship one terminated in the image and the other passing by it unto the examplar of it and you will find what thanks he will give you for your good instruction And how small a portion are these of that Mass of distinctions which you have coyned to free them from Idolatry who worship Images who all the while understand not one word of what you intend by them nor can any rational man reduce them unto any thing intelligible Sir In this matter of images you talk of coming up close to your business and I was willing to take a little pains with you to direct you in your way that having a mind to your work as you seem to pretend you may not mistake and wander away from your duty but address your self unto that which you undertake and which is expected from you You are to prove that there is a necessity of receiving the use of images in the worship of the Church so that whosoever doth not admit them is to be cast out of the Communion thereof and 2. That these Images so received are to be worshipped and adored with religious veneration if not with the very same worship that is due to the Persons represented by them yet with that which redounds unto them and that not only by the outward gesture of the body but the inward motions of the mind And when you shall have proved that the Doctrine and practice of your Church in this matter of making and worshipping Images is not contrary to the Scripture or was ever received or approved by the primitive Church for six hundred years I will promise you setting aside all other Considerations immediately to become a Papist for the present I see no cause so to do and shall therefore return to consider what you here say for the further adorning of your pictures The first thing you reflect upon is my censure of that passage in your Fiat that the sight of Images in the Church is apt to cast the minds of
the people from their Captivity they began to lose the purity of their own tongue and most of them understood the Syrochaldaean wherein about that time some small parts of the Scripture also were written In no long process of time a great portion of them living scattered in the Provinces of the Macedonian Empire and therefore called Hellenists used and spake the Greek tongue their own ceasing to be vulgar unto them All these both in private and in their publick Synagogne Worship made use of a Translation of the Scripture into Greek which was now become their vulgar tongue and that made either by the LXXII Elders sent from Jerusalem to Ptolomy Philadelphus or which is more probable by the Jews of Alexandria unto which City multitudes of them repaired the Nation being made free of it by its founder or it may be some while after by the Priest Onias who lead a great Colony of them into Aegypt and there built them a Temple for their Worship So did these Hebrews make use of a Translation when their own tongue ceased to be vulgar unto them The monster of serving God by rational men with a tongue whereof they understand never a word was not yet hatched The other portion of the people who either lived in Palestina or those parts of the East where the Greck tongue never prevailed into common use so soon as their language began to be mixed with the Syrochaldean and the purity of it to grow into disuse made use constantly of their Targums or Translations into that tongue Neither can it be proved but that the Jerusalem Jews understood the Hebrew well enough until the destruction of the City and Temple by Titus So that from the Church of the Jews you cannot obtain the least countenance to your practice And there lyes in Gods dealing with them a strong Argument and Testimony against it For if God himself thought meet to intrust his Oracles unto his People in that language which was common unto them all hath he not tanght us that it is his Will they should still be so continued And is there not still the same reason for it as there was at first 2. Farther the practice of the Latin Church is unavoidably against you For whereas the Scripture was no part of it written in Latin which was their vulgar tongue it it was immediately both Old Testament and New turned thereinto and therein used as in their publick Worship so by private Persons of all sorts upon the encouragement of the Rulers of it And no reason of their translation of it which they made and had from time immemorial can possibly be imagined but only the indispensible necessity which they apprehended of having the Scripture in a Language which the People did generally speak and understand 3. The case was the same in the antient Greek Church The New Testament was Originally written in their own vulgar tongue which they made use of accordingly And as for the old they constantly used a Translation of it into the same dialect So that it is impossible that we can obtain a clearer suffrage from the Antient Churches both Jews and Christians and these both of Latins and Greeks in any thing then we have against this custom of your Church But these languages you say have ceased to be vulgar for some thousand years to your knowleage Bona verba You know much I perceive yet not so much but that it is possible you may sometimes fail in your Chronological faculty Pray how many thousand years is it think you since Christs birth now this year 1663. or since the ruine of the Greek or Latin Empire and therein the Corruption of theiâ— Languages I believe you will not find it above three or four thousand at the most upon your next Calculation though I can assure you an ingenuous Person told me he thought from the manner of your speaking you might guess at some nine or ten What then Was the Bible say you put into other vulgar tongues when they ceased to be vulgar Yes by some they were Hierom translated it into the Dalmatian tongue Vlphilus into the Gotish Beda a great part of it into the Saxon and the like no doubt was done by others The Eastern Countreys also to whom the Greek was not so well known had Translations of their own from the very beginning of their Christianity And for the rest shall the wretched negligence of men in times of confusion and ignorance such as those were wherein the Greek and Latin tongues ceased to be vulgar prescribe a Rule and Law unto us of practice in the worship of God contrary to his own direction the nature of the thing its self and the example of all the Churches of Christ for five hundred years For besides that in the Empire it was alwayes used and read in the vulgar tongues those Nations that knew not the two great Languages that were commonly spoken therein from the time that they received the Christian faith took care to have the Scriptures translated into their Own mother tongue So Chrysostom tells us that the Gospel of John wherein occasionally he especially instanceth was in his dayes translated into the Syrian Egyptian Indian Persian and Ethiopian Languages Hom. 1. in John But you say Did the Church either of the Hebrews or Christians Greek or Latin ever deliver it transtlated to the generality of the People or use it in their Ser vice or command it so to be done as a thing of General concernment so far is it from that that they would never permit it But you do not sufficiently consider what you say The Hebrew Church had no need so to do God gave the Scripture unto it in their own mother tongue and that only And they had no reason to translate it out of their knowledge and understanding The Greek Church had the New Testament in the same manner and the Old they translated or delivered it so translated by others unto the generality of the people and used it in their Service The Latin Church did so also The Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament also being originally written in Languages unknown vulgarly unto them they had them translated into their own common tongue for the generality of the People and used that Translation in their Publick Service The same was the practice of the Syrians and all other Nations of old that had a language in common use peculiar to themselves All your Plea ariseth from the practice of some who through ignorance or negligence provided not for the good and necessity of the Churches of Christ when through the changes and confusions that happened in the world the Greek and Latin tongues ceased to be vulgar which how many thousand years ago it was you may calculate at your next leisure This is that which in them we blame and in you much more because you will follow them after you have been so frequently admonished of your miscarriage therein for
you add to your sin by making that which was neglect in them wilful choice in you commanding that not to be done which they only omitted to do But you will not leave this matter you told us in your Fiat that neither Moses nor any after him did take care to have the Scripture turned into Syriack I desired to know why they should seeing Hebrew was their vulgar tongue and the Syriak unknown unto them which I proved from the saying of the Princes of Hezekiah when they desired Rabshakeh to speak unto them in Syriak which they understood and not in the Jews Language in the hearing of the people to affright and trouble them This I did for your satisfaction the thing its self being absolutely out of question and not in the least needing any proof amongst those who understand any thing of this business But you yet attempt to revive your first mistake and to say somewhat unto the instance whereby it was rectified but with your usual success Will you therefore be pleased to hear your self talk you know not what in this matter once more Thus then you proceed Sir you are mistaken for the longue the Princes perswaded Rabshakeh to speak was the Assyrian his own language which was learned by the Gentry in Palestine as we in England learn the French which although by abbreviation it be called Syriack yet is differed as much from the Jews Language which was spoken by Christ and his Apostles whereof Eli Eli lama Sabacthani is a part and was over since that time called Syrian or Syriack as French differs from English And if you would read attentively you may suspect by the very words of the Text that the Jews Language even then was not the Hebrew For it had been a shorter and plainer expression and more answerable to their custom so to call it if it had been so then by a paraphrase to name it the Jews Language which if then it was called Syrian as afterwards it was then had the Princes reason to call it rather the Jews Language then Syrian because that and the Assyrian differed more in nature then appellation though some difference doubtless there was in the very word and name although Translators have not heeded to deliver it Shibbolet and Sibbolet may differ more in signification then sound nor is Brittish and brutish so neer in nature as they are in name And who knows not that Syria and Assyria were several Kingdoms as likewise were the Languages I had much ado at first to understand what it is that you would have in this discourse and no wonder for I am sure you do not understand your self And I am perswaded that if you knew how many prodigies you have poured out in these few lines you would be amazed at the product of your own imagination For 1. You yet again suppose Syriack to have been the vulgar language of the Jews in the dayes of Hezechiah a thing that never fell upon the fancy of any man before you being contrary to express Scripture in the Testimony before recited and all the monuments of those dayes wherein the Sermons of the Prophets unto the people are recorded in the purest Hebrew neither had the people as yet been carried captive out of their own land or been mixed with strangers so as to have lost their language as you imagine unless you think that indeed the Hebrew was never their vulgar tongue 2. You suppose the Syrian and Assyrian at that time to have been different Languages whereof those who understood the one understood not the other when they were but one and the same called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the tongue of Aram neither was there ever any other difference between the Language of the Assyrians or Chaldaeans and that which was afterwards peculiarly called Syriack but in some few words and various terminations and how far this differed from the Jews Language you have an instance in the names given by Jacob and Laben to the same heap of witness Gen. 31. 47. the one calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Galead the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 iegar Sahadutha neither was it at all understood by the common people of the Jews Jer. 5. 15. 3. You suppose that in the Language wherein Rabshakeh and the Princes conferred their Syriack was an abbreviation of Assyriack because in sound it was so near the other that they would have him speak in So that the Jews speaking Syriack when the Princes desired Rabshakeh to speak Syriack they meant another Language as much differing from that as French from English But you are in the dark and know not how you wander up and down to no purpose There is nothing of the words that you pretend to be an abbreviation the one of the other in the Text nor is there any such relation between them as you imagine that they should be near in sound though not in nature Eliakim entreats Rabshakeh that he would speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aramith Aramice that is as the Greeks and Latins express that people and Language Syriace in Syriack that he would speak the language of Aram which Language was spoken also by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the King and People of Assyria And truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aram is no abreviation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ashur as I suppose 4. You talk of the lenghth of that expression in the Jews Language when there is nothing in the Text but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jehudith Judaice that is in Hebrew 5. Some difference you suppose there was between the Assyrian and Syrian in sound and name though Translators have not heeded to deliver it When there is no agreement at all between them but you say there was more in nature when there was none at all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lashon Arami the tongue of Aram was the Language of Assyria Ashur being but a Colony of Aram. 6 So you think that Shibboleth and Sibboleth may differ more in signification then sound But pray what do you think is the signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Ephramites pronounced 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 just as much as a word falsly pronounced signifieth and no more that is of its self just nothing at all For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sibboleth is no Hebrew word but meerly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Shibboleth falsly pronounced 7. You imagine that the Language spoken by Christ and his Apostles was the same that was spoken in the dayes of Hezekiah and this you would prove from those words Eli Eli lama Sabacthani to be that which is now commonly called Syriack and fancy an Assyrian tongue as much differing from it as French differs from English which manifests your skill in the Oriental Languages for want whereof I do not blame you for what is that to me but I cannot take it well that you should choose me out to trouble me with talking about that which you do not understand For
here you give us two Languages the Syriack and Assyriack which names in the Original differed but little in sound but the languages themselves did as much in nature as French and English And the Syriack you tell us was that which is now so peculiarly called but what the Assyriack was you tell us not but only that when the Princes perswade Rabshakeh to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aramith he intended an Assyrian language that was not Syrian The boys that grind colours in our Grammer Schools laugh at these Mormoes 8. Neither do you know well what you say when you affirm that the Language of Christ and his Apostles was the same that was ever since called the Syriack for the very instance you give manifests it to have been a different dialect from it the words as recorded by the Evangelists being absolutely the same neither with the Hebrew nor Targum nor Syriack Translation of the Old Testament That wherein we have the Translation of the Scripture and which prevailed in the Eastern Church being a peculiar Antiochian dialect of the old Aramaean Tongue And that whole language called the Syriack peculiarly now and whereof there were various dialects of old seems to have had its beginning after the Jews return from their captivity being but a degenerate mixture of the Hebrew and Chaldee whereunto also after the prevalency of the Macedonian Empire many Greek word were admitted and some Latine ones also afterwards 9. You advantage not your self by affirming that Assyria and Syria were several Kingdoms For as Strabo will inform you they were both originally called Syrian and indeed were one and the same until the more Eastern Provinces about Babylon obtaining their peculiar denominations that part of Asia which contains Comogena Phaenicia Palestina and Coelosyria became to be especially called Syria Originally they were all Aramites as every one knows that can but read the Scripture in its Original Language And now I suppose you may see how little you have advantaged your self or your cause by this maze of mistakes and contradictions For no errour can be so thick covered with others but that it will rain through The Jews you suppose to have lost their own language in the dayes of Hezekiah and to have spoken Syriack the Syrian and Assyrian to have been languages as far distant as French and English that when the Princes entreated Rabshakeh to speak the Syrian language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they intended not the Syrian Language which was indeed the Jews but the Assyrian quite differing from it and so when they desired him not to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you suppose them to have desired him not to speak in the Jews language but to speak in the Jews language which you say was the Syriack And sundry other no less unhappy absurdities have you amassed together But you will retrive us out of this Labyrinth by a Story of what a Greek Biship did and said at Paris in the presence of Doctor Cousins now bishop of Durham how he refused the Articles of the English Church and did all things according to the Roman mode asserting the use of Liturgies in the vulgar Greek Unto which I shall say no more but that it was at Paris and not at Durham Graeculus esuriens in caelum jusseris ibit I have my self known some eminent members of that Church in England two especially one many years ago called Conopius who if I mistake not upon his return obtained the honour of a Patriarchate being sent hither by the then Patriarch of Constantinople the other not many years ago called Anastatius Comnenus Archimandrite as his Testimonials be spake him of a Monastry on Mount Sinai Both these I am sure made it their business to inveigh against your Church practices having the Arguments of Nilus against your Supremacy at their fingers ends And if the Greek Chruch and you are so well agreed as you pretend why do you censure them as Hereticks and Schismaticks and receive only some few of them who are runnagates from their own Tents What may those whom you proclaim to be your enemies expect from you when you deal thus severely with those whom you give out to be your friends But as for this matter of the Scripture and prayers in an unknown tongue though they transgress not with so high an hand as you do the old Greeks being not so absolutely remote from the present vulgar as the Latine is from our English and the Languages of diverse other Nations whom you compell to your Church Service in that toague and besides they have the Scripture translated into their present vulgar tongue for the use of private persons yet we approve not their practice but look upon it as a great means of continuing that ignorance and darkness which is unquestionably spread over the major part of that Church which in some places as in Russia is to such a degree as to dispose the people unto Barbarism We know also that herein they are gone off from the constant and Catholick usage of their forefathers who for some Centuries of years from the dayes of the Apostles themselves who planted Churches amongst them both had the Bible in their own vulgar Tongue and made no use of any other in the publick Service of their Assemblies And that their example in your present degenerate condition which in some things you as little approve of as we do in others should have any great power upon us I know as yet little reason to judge Your last attempt in this matter is to vindicate what you have said in your Fiat as you now affirm That the Bible was kept in an Ark or Tabernncle not touched by the people but brought on t at times to the Priest that he might instruct the people out of it To which you say I answer That the Ark was placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum which was not entred into but by the Priest and that only once a year And Reply But Sir I speake not there of any Sanctum Sanctorum or of any Ark in that place was there or could there be no more Arks but one If you had been only in these latter days in any Synagogue or Convention of the Jews you might have seen even now how the Bible is still kept with them in an Ark or Tabernacle in imitation of their forefathers when they have no Sanctum Sanctorum amongst them You may also discern how according to your custome they â—ringe and prostrate at the bringing out of the Biblt which is the only solemn adoration left amongst them there be more Arks then that in the Sanctum Sanctorum if I had called it a Box or a Chest or a Cupboard you had let it pass but I used that word as more sacred The oftener that you touch upon this string the harsher is the found that it yields I would desire you to free your self from the unhappiness of supposing
that it tends unto your disreputation to be esteemed unacquainted with the Jews language and customes If you cannot do so you will not be able to avoid suffering from your own thoughts especially if you cannot for bear talking al out them This was all that in your former discourse you were obnoxious unto but this renewal of it hath rendred your condition somewhat worse then it was For failures in Skill and Science are not in demerit to be compared with those in Morality which are voluntary and of choice Your words in your Fiat after you had learnedly observed that the Bible was never in Moses time nor afterwards by any high Priest translated into Syriack for the use of the People are Nay it was so far from that that it was not touched nor looked upon by the people but kept privately in the Ark or Tabernacle and brought for that times by the Priest who might upon the Sabboth day read some part of it to the people I confess your expression in the Ark or Tabernacle was somewhat uncouth and discovered that you did but obscurely guess at the thing you ventured to discourse about But I took your words in that only sense they were capable of namely that the Bible was kept in the Ark or at least in the Tabernacle that is some part of it whereunto the People had no access And he must be a man devoid of reason and common sense who could imagine that you intended any thing but the sacred Ark and Tabernacle when you said that it was kept in the Ark or Tabernacle For not only by all rules of interpretation is the word used indefinitely to be taken in sensu famosiori but also your manner of Expression will admit of no other sense or intention Now herein in the Animadversions I minded you of your failure and told you that not the whole Bible as you imagined but only the Pentateuch was placed not in but at the sides of the Ark. That the Ark was kept in the Sanctuary that no Priest went in thither but only the High Priest and that but once a year that the book of the Law was never brought forth from thence to be read to the people and lastly that whatever of this kind you might fancy yet it would not in the least conduce to your purpose it being openly evident that besides the Publick lections out of the Law that People had all of them the Scripture in their houses and were bound by the command of God to read and meditate in them continually What say you now to these things 1. You change your words and affirm that you said it was kept in an Ark or Tabernacle as though you meant any Ark or Chest. But you too much wrong your self your words are as before represented in the Ark or Tabernacle and you remembred them well enough to be so which so perplexeth you in your attempt to rectifie what you said For after you have changed the first word the addition of the next leaves you in the briars of nonsense in an Ark or Tabernacle as though they were terms convertible a Chest or a Tent. I wish you would make an end of this fond shooting at rovers 2. You apply that to the practice of the present Jews in their Synagogues which you plainly spake of the antient Jews whilest their Temple and Church state continued wherein again you intrench upon morality for an Evasion And besides you cast your self upon new mistakes For 1. The Book kept in a Chest by them and brought forth with the veneration you speak of is not the whole Bible as you imagine but only the Pentateuch which was read in their Synagogues on the Sabbath dayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as James tells us Act. 15. 21. Only whereas their Law was particularly sought after to be destroyed by Antiochus Epiphanes they supplyed the room of it with the other parts of the Scripture divided into Haphters answerable unto the Sections of the Law Nor 2. Is that brought out to or by a Priest but to any Rabbi that precides in their Synagogue worship for they have no Priest amongst them nor certain distinction of Tribes so that if you your self have been in any Synagogue or Convention of the Jews it is evident that you understood little of what you saw them do 3. For their Prostration at the bringing out of the Book which you seem to commend as a solemn Adoration it is down right Idolatrous for in it they openly worship the material roll or book that they keep But what is it that you would from hence conclude Is it that which you attempted in yout Fiat namely that the People amongst the Jews had not the Bible in their own language and in common use among them You may as easily prove that the Sun shines not at noon day The Scripture was committed unto them in their own mother tongue and they were commanded of God to read and study it continually the Psalmist pronouncing them blessed who did accordingly And the present Jews make the same duty of indispensable necessity unto every one amongst them after he comes to be filius praecepti or lyable to the keeping of any command of God The Rules they give for all sorts of Persons high and low rich and poor young and old sick and in health for the performance of this duty are known to all who have any acquaintance with their present Principles Practices State and Condition And you shall scarcely meet with a child amongst them of nine ytars old who is not exercised to the reading of the Bible in Hebrew And yet though they all generally learn the Hebrew tongue for this purpose in their Infancy yet least they should neglect it or through trouble be kept from it they have translated the whole Old Testament into all the Languages of the Nations amongst whom in any nambers they are scattered The Arabick Translation of the Mauritanian Jews the Spanish of the Spaniards and Portugues I can shew you it you please Upon the whole matter I wish you knew how great the work is wherein you are engaged and how contemptible the engines are whereby you hope to effect it But such Positions and such Confirmations are very well suited And this is the summ of what you plead afresh in vindication of your Latine Service and keeping the Scripture from the use of the People If you suppose your self armed hereby against the express Institution of Christ by his Apostâ—es the example of Gods dealing with his people of old the nature of the things themselves and universal practise of the Primitive Church I really pitty you and shall continue to pray for you that you may not any longer bring upon your selves the blood of souls CHAP. 23. Communion THE Defence of your Paragraph about Communion in one kind is totally deserted by you I know no other cause of your so doing but a sence of your incompetency for its defence seing you