could not be a certain character of the Infallibility of that Council But why do we use Arguments in a matter in which experience has sufficiently instructed us The Fifth Council assembled at Constantinople on occasion of three Books published the one of Ibas Bishop of Edessa the other of Theodorus of Mopsuesta and the other of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus was it not held in spight of all the oppositions of Pope Vigilius did not that Council condemn those Writings as Heretical against the express prohibitions that Vigilius had made by a publick Decree to Condemn them and yet notwithstanding was not that very Council in the end approved by the Successours of Vigilius and in fine received throughout all the Church for a True and Holy Oecumenical Council Those Approbations therefore are only a juggle which wholly depend on the capricious humours of the Popes on their different Interests on their good or ill humours One Pope disapproves of a Council and makes it void to advance all that he does by that the Council is remote enough from Infallibility and ought not to be held for Infallible another Pope comes and receives and approves of it and behold on a sudden that Council changes its condition and becomes Infallible Besides that did not Pope Liberius approve an Arian Council held at Sirmium in subscribing an Heretical Confession that had been drawn up and which Saint Hilary calls the Arian perfidiousness the Heresie sprung from Sirmium for which he pronounced an Anathema against Liberius For what else was that Subscription in Consequence of which Liberius embraced the Communion of the Arians but a Ratification and real Approbation of the Act of an Erroneous Council and it signifies nothing to say That Liberius was in Exile when he committed that Error for without alledging here what he himself declared to the Eastern Arian Bishops That he was in Peace and Unanimity with them and all their Provinces in good earnest and that he had received that Catholick Faith with all his heart that he had never in the least contradicted it that he had readily given his consent that he followed and held it his Exile and Concern to get away from them does not hinder but that it should be true That he did approve an Infidel Confession nor by Consequence letting us see that it might very well happen That the Popes did Authorize the Acts of wicked Councils and that it ought not to be pretended that their Approbation makes Councils Infallible nor that it has any certain ground for declaring them to be such 6. That Example of Liberius encounters also all those who ascribe that Infallibility to the Popes for behold one in whom by the Testimony of St. Hilary and St. Jerom that Priviledge had no effect But as that Opinion is not generally received in this Kingdom and we need not to fear objections from any here so it is needless to refute them I shall only say that that Dispute that is in the Church of Rome about those to whom this Infallibility belongs whether to the Pope only or a Council only or to a Council approved by the Pope or to the Pope as the Head of the Council lets us see that that pretence in general has no ground for if in truth the Latine Church had that Priviledge it would never be so uncertain as they have made it but it would have been known a little more clearly where it resided However it be it plainly appears that the Latine Church does not pretend to it as a Law of Nature for she is composed of no different blood from the rest of men nor as a right joyned to the profession of Christianity nor as a meer quality of a Church for in that case the Greek and other Churches would have the same advantage but that she pretends to it as a peculiar priviledge whereby they were distinguished from other Churches as the Greek and Armenian c. It appears that they would not set this Prerogative before us as a first Principle which is evident of it self without needing any proof for in fine it is not so clear that the Latin Church should be Infallible as it is that one and one make two and that the whole is greater than any of its parts It is then certainly but very reasonable to demand that they would give us the proofs and grounds of so important a right I mean other proofs than those that are commonly taken from the same Authority of that Church For it will not be enough to confirm that Infallibility for her only to say I am so every Church may say the same and yet not be believed They ought to produce proofs and proofs that come from Heaven since there is none besides God that can confer so great a Right and they ought to shew them to us to the end we may judge of them and weigh their Cogency and Truth That being so I affirm that our Fathers were bound to use all sorts of Rational methods to examine that Question whether the Church of Rome was Infallible or no And to look to both sides to settle themselves in a good Judgment This is that which in my opinion none will contest But from thence these things will clearly follow 1. That our Fathers had right to examine one of the Tenets of the Latin Church which is that of her Infallibility 2. That they had right to judge of it according to the Nature of those proofs which presented themselves for or against it 3. That they might lawfully reject it as false if in their examination of it it appeared to be false 4. That it is neither absurd nor rash to maintain that every one has right to examine a Tenet of the Church and to judge of it 5. That all those General Objections which they have hitherto made against that Truth are false and frivolous such as these that if one give All that Liberty of examining every one may make a Religion of his own That there is no other way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith That he who examines makes himself a Judg above the Church That it is the ready way to bring in a private Spirit and other such like things all which are refuted by that one Example in the Point of Infallibility 6. That if it is no ways absurd that every one should have right to examine a Tenet of the Church that cannot be proved otherwise than by the Scriptures it is not also absurd to say that that right of searching out the true sence of Scripture belongs to every Christian 7. That it is not absurd to say that a Believer is Master of his own Faith by depending only upon God and independant on men 8. That if every Christian has right to examine one of the chief Articles of Religion it is no ways inconvenient to say that he has right to examine all for there is not less danger nor less
3. But we must go yet higher and follow the Scripture yet farther It teaches us that God has put his Sacred Writings immediately into the hands of all the Faithful as well as into those of the Pastors with an obligation to read them exactly and to build their Faith and their Hope upon them whence it follows that they have right to refer the Doctrines of their Pastors and to examine them by that Rule and that they are not bound To see with the Eyes of the Prelates nor to devest themselves of their own guidance to rest themselves upon that of their Prelates The Proof of this Truth may appear from a thousand places of Scripture When God would give his Law to the Israelites he said to Moses Gather me the people together that I may make them hear my words that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth and that they may teach their children Moses just before his death assembled all of Israel together and said to them O Israel hearken unto the Statutes and unto the Judgments which I teach you for to do them that ye may live Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you neither shall ye diminish ought from it Keep the Statues and Judgments of God and do them for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the Nations which shall hear these Statutes And another time having assembled the same people he speaks to them these words Hear O Israel the statutes and judgments which I pronounce this day that hearing them ye may learn them and keep and do them The words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart Thou shalt teach them diligenty unto thy children and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up Thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes Thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house and upon thy gates It was in following that Primitive Institution that the Faithful among the Jews Read the Scripture so carefully Blessed is the man says David whose delight is in the Law of the Lord and meditates in that Law day and night and elsewhere he would have the young men order their ways according to the word of God Saint Paul by the same Spirit commends Timothy in that from a child he had known the holy Scriptures See then the Old Law the Antient Scriptures given immediately into the hands of all the Faithful with a command to Read them and meditate upon them and consequently to build immediately upon them their Faith their Piety and their Comfort But because we should not imagine that that Order has been changed under the New Testament we need but to run through the first Verses of the greater part of the Epistles of Saint Paul and those of Saint Peter of Saint James of Saint Jude and they will see that they are addrest to the Faithful of the Churches as well as to the Pastors To all that be in Rome called to be Saints To the Saints and Faithful in Jesus Christ which are at Ephesus To all the Saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi where he distinguishes them from the Pastors for he adds with the Bishops and Deacons All that lets us see clearly that there was nothing changed in that regard They will say it may be that it does not follow from thence that the more simple among the Faithful should take to themselves that liberty of searching out by themselves the true meaning of the Scriptures and that they ought not to refer themselves to their Pastors who are the Interpreters of them But if that were so why should he have addrest them immediately to them why should he have put them in their hands with commands to Read them to Learn them and to Mediate of them in their Houses in their Journeys in their rising Up and lying Down why should he have said that it was all their Wisdom and all their Understanding if he had not supposed that they could of themselves comprehend the meaning of them at least of so much as might be sufficient for their particular Comfort and for their Salvation Moreover that is clearly refuted by the Use that Jesus Christ and his Apostles would have us make of the Scripture that we might know him to be the true Messiah notwithstanding the contradictions of the ordinary Pastors of that Church who gave to that Scripture a quite contrary meaning Search the Scriptures said our Lord to them for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testifie of me To what purpose should he have said that if he would not have them by themselves search out the true sence of the Scripture and that they should correct the false Interpretations which their ordinary Pastors gave of it It is from this Principle that Saint Peter and Saint Paul proved Jesus Christ to be the Messiah not of the Scriptures and Converted the people as it may appear by their Sermons And it is also upon this Foundation that the Inhabitants of Berea are praised for having made use of that Right and for having by themselves had recourse to the Scripture to know whether that which Saint Paul and Silas told them was true These were saith St. Luke more noble than those Jews in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so After that how can any one affirm that the Faithful ought blindly to believe their Pastors and to strip themselves of their own conduct to rest themselves upon that of the Prelates Is not this to condemn that which the Scripture praises If you look on those of Berea as being yet Jews had they not their ordinary Pastors who had before condemned Jesus Christ and all his Doctrine Wherefore then had they recourse to the Scriptures Could they better comprehend the sence of them than all the Church to which they had submitted themselves a Church I say which was upheld by all the Authority of Moses by the Sacred Names of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob by the glory of a thousand Miracles by the sending of the Prophets by the Holiness of a Temple where God had placed his Name for ever and by the Majesty of a Succession that had been preserved for near twenty Ages And if you look upon them as new made Christians were not Paul and Silas their True Pastors whom their Zeal their Constancy their Travels their Preaching their Knowledg and their Miracles had made famous every where Why did not they trust them why did they yet farther compare their words with the Scripture CHAP. VIII A Further Examination of that Authority of the Prelats and that absolute Obedience
submission and hindring them from entring upon any Examination of the Matters of Religion But blessed be God that notwithstanding all the endeavours they have hither to made on a subject that has exhausted all the subtilties of the Schools the Justice of our Cause which is the same with that of our Fathers has not receiv'd the least prejudice and we can even assure our selves that there has been nothing said the weakness and impertinency of which may not easily be display'd to the bare light of common sence For either those things which our Fathers rejected and which we reject with them are in deed Errors Superstitions and Inventions of men as we believe them to be or they are not If they are not we will be the first that shall Condemn the Reformation and when they shall let us see that on the contrary they are the Truths and right worship that belong to the Christian Religion we shall be very ready to receive them But if in deed they are Errors and Corruptions as we are perswaded they are with what Reason can any man demand by what right we rejected them since it is all one as to demand what right we have to be good men and to take care of our own Salvation We may see then from thence that all those Evasions are nothing else but vain wranglings and that we ought always to examine those Tenets that are Controverted for the Justice or Injustice of the Reformation intirely depends on their Truth or Falshood If we have right at the Foundation they ought not to raise a contention about the Form for to be willing to believe in God according to the purity of his word and to be ready to serve him sincerely are the things to which we are all obliged and which cannot be condemned in whomsoever they are found as on the contrary side to harden one's self in Errors to practise a false Worship and to expose one's self to the danger of Damnation under pretence of observing some Formalities is such a guidance of one's course as can never be Justified It will here be to no purpose that they say that in this Controversy concerning the Justice of the Reformation they do not suppose that we have any reason in the Foundation of it but that on the contrary they have a mind to let us see that we have no right at all in the Foundation since we have none at all in the Form and that they would only say that those things which we call Errors and a false Worship are not so indeed as we imagine them to be since they are the Institutions of a Church that can't Err and to whose Authority we ought absolutely to submit our selves This is in my judgment the course that not long since an Author has took in a Book Intitled Just Prejudices against the Calvinists For he pretends to conclude that our Religion is faulty in the very Foundation because there are Errors in the manner of our Reformation and that those things which we reject as Errors are the Truths that we ought to believe because we ought to acquiesce in the Authority of the Church of Rome But that can never hinder us from coming to a discussion of the Foundation it self separated from all Forms and from all prejudices for when these Gentlemen have reasoned against us after this manner You are faulty in the very Foundation because you have not had right in the Form we oppose to that this other Reasoning whose consequence is not less Valid as to the subject about which it is concerned We have not done wrong in the manner because we have right in the Foundation And when they tell us That which you call our Errors Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Purgatory c. they are not Errors since we cannot Err we Answer them You can Err because the Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Host the Pargatory c. that you teach are Errors And when they reply You ought to believe that which we teach you because you ought to acquiesce and rest in our Authority we rejoyn again We ought not to acquiesce in your Authority because you teach us those things which we ought not to believe In these two ways of Reasoning it is certain that ours is the more equal the more just and more natural For it is by far the more just and natural that the Judgment of those Formalities should depend on the highest Interest that can be in the World which is that of the glory of God and ourown Salvation then on the contrary to make the glory of God and our own Salvation to depend upon some Formalities It is far more reasonable to judge of the Infallibility that the Church of Rome pretends to by the things that she teaches then to judge of the chings that she Teaches by a pretence of her Infallibility But although these two ways were equally Natural and equally Reasonable they can not deny that that which at first drew nearer to the Examen of the Foundation were not more sure and that all good men who ought to neglect nothing conducing to their Salvation were not bound to enter into it in Order to the avoiding of Errors They Propose on one side for a Principle the Authority of the Church of Rome against which there are a thousand things to be said on the other side we Propose the Authority of God himself speaking in those Scriptures which all Christians receive and which the very Enemies of Christianity respect who will dare to deny that in this Opposition it were not more sure to side with that part which rules all by the Authority of God You may deceive your selves say they in taking that for the word of God which is not so And are not you answer we more liable to deceive your selves in taking that for the Church of God which is not so and in taking those for Infallible who are no ways so There is far greater Reason to hope that God will then assist you with the illumination of his Spirit when with humility you search out the sence of the Scriptures which you are so often commanded to do then when you search them through humane prejudices to submit your Consciences to a certain Orde of Men whom God has never told you that they ought to be the Masters of your Faith After all if they will make use of the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of our Reformation as an Argument sufficient to let us see that those things which we call Errors are not really so they can demand nothing more of us then to set down this proof in its order with the rest and maturely to consider it in its turn before we determine our selves But to pretend that that ought to hinder us from considering also the proofs on the contrary side by which we may see that those things that we call Errors are really so this were an injust
much frequented it would be nevertheless least of all so in the quality of a True Church in that its natural beauty is so darkned and its Visage so disfigured that in judging according to its Appearances one can but very difficultly say that God does yet preserve some Faithful ones in that Communion and under that Ministry But they will say may not a Church fall into that Condition and yet for all that be a true Church I answer that a Visible Society as I have shewn is not called a true Church but only with respect to those true Believers who are in it and not with respect to the others When then it comes to pass that the party of the Men of the World prevails and fills that Society with its Corruptions all that Society taken in the general does not fail as yet to be called a True Church while their is some appearance how small soever it may be that God does yet keep and hold in it those good men who do not defile their Souls with that Corruption of the wicked But how can say they yet further those good men preserve themselves in the midst of such a Society I answer That they may preserve themselves there after that manner that one may preserve himself in a contagious Air where he draws in the Air because it is necessary to his Life but yet he may keep himself as well as he can from that Contagion by the help of Antidotes There are two things in a Corrupted Church the good and the evil if a Man can separate that good from the evil that is to say if he can take the one and keep himself from the other without falling into Hypocrisy and being bound to do as those who equally take the good and the evil which he knows not how to do without dividing between God and his Conscience he may be saved in a corrupted Communion and there may not be another more pure This evidently appears from the Examples of Zachary and Elizabeth of Simeon of Joseph and the Holy Virgin and divers other persons who liv'd in the Jewish Church when our Saviour came into the World and who preserved their Piety though that Church was fallen into the highest Corruption under the Ministry of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus Christ himself who reproved the abuses of those wicked men and exhorted his disciples to take heed of their false Doctrines did not fail to live in that Common Society and to be found in the Temple with them and after that he had been Crucified by them his disciples did not wholly withdraw themselves from their Communion during some time and till they had indispensable reasons for it I will shew in the Progress of this Treatise that it does not from thence follow that we may at this day abide in the Roman Communion and that it much less follows that we may return thither by forsaking the Communion of the Protestants under a pretence that we may separate the good from the bad the pure from what is impure since we can no more do that then not become wicked Impostures Hypocritical and Detestable before God and Men. But as this is a point that belongs to another Place it shall suffice me to have clearly shewn in this Chapter in what manner and with what distinctions it may be said that there is always a true Visible Church and to have made it appear that it no ways follows from thence that she must needs be Infallible as the Church of Rome pretends that she is After all this it is not difficult to find out the just and true sence of some passages of Scripture which they abuse in this matter of Visibility For as to that of the Gospel whereof we have spoken Tell it to the Church and if he will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as the Heathens and the Publicans It is clear that particular Churches are treated of there and that the personal differences which we may have one with another and the meaning of it is that the Faithful are bound when they receive any wrong from their brethren to carry their complaints to the Church and to refer themselves to its Judgment Or if it is not to be understood in those Times and in those places where there shall be Churches established to the Judgment of their Guides and Pastors who may end those private Quarrels And if they will infer from thence that then there must be always a Visible Church that may be in a Condition to attend to those Reconciliations this is that that has no colour of Reason For that Command of Jesus Christ obliging the Faithful no further then as it lies in their power it would be but a very bad arguing to say that he has so engaged for that that he will so order it that there shall be perpetually a visible Assembly to hear Complaints and give Judgments It is within a little as if one should say that he was engaged that we should always have wherewithal to Lend and wherewithal to give Alms because he has bid us to Lend without hoping for any thing again and to make our selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness Or that our Kings were bound never to leave vacant the Office of a Constable or that of the Mayor of the Palace under a pretence that heretofore they order'd their subjects to acknowledge those Dignities and to have recourse to them in certain Affairs Tell it to the Church then does not in the least suppose that the True Church ought to be always in such a State wherein she should have Authority to pass her Judgments for the determining private Quarrels And besides what I have said Experience contradicts it for it is most true that during the hottest Persecutions of the Heathen Emperours where all was laid in desolation that it had in many places nothing like a Visible Tribunal to which men could easily address themseves There are some other Passages that denote the duty of the Pastors and in particular of the Apostles as those where they are called The Salt of the Earth the light of the World a City set upon a Hill a Candle not lighted to be set under a Bushel and the Gentlemen of the Roman Church do not fail to set them down to give some colour to their Pretensions But this is evidently to abuse the Scriptures to make them establish the perpetual Visibility of the Church after that meaning wherein they understand those passages which exhort the Apostles and after them the Ministers of the Gospel to acquit themselves faithfully of their charge without negligence and weariness from the Consideration of their Calling and the end to which God had appointed them For besides that their Office does not bind them to that of a Martyr which does not suppose a very splendid State of the Church Besides that the same does not oblige them to be Martyrs if they were not specially
Prejudices is Will they say to defend themselves that their is a very great difference between the Jewish Visible Church and the Christian that this has its Rights Priviledges and Promises which the other had not For she has a Soveraign Authority over the Faith of her Children a priviledge that she can never err and promises of a perpetual visibility But to come to that they ought first to renounce all those general proofs upon which they found that Absolute Obedience to the Latin Church They need say no more as the Author of the Prejudices has done that the darkness of our minds our personal Prejudices the uncertainty wherein we are of being deceived in our Judgments the being overwhelmed with a thousand cares and a thousand Temporal necessities which almost wholly take us up and which will not allow us to give more then a very little Time to the Examining the Truths of Religion the want of necessary helps the ignorance narrow and limited understandings of the greatest part of mankind constrain us to refer our selves to the Church All that would be to no purpose if they restrain it to a priviledge of the Christian Church For these very same general reasons had place in the time of the Jewish Church men saw not then more clearly then they do in these days they were not more assured in their Judgments they were not less cumbred with worldly affairs they were not less unprovided of necessary helps for the Examination of the Truths of Religion they were not then less ignorant and their minds less narrow then men are now in these days and yet notwithstanding all that did not make it their duty blindly to follow their Pastors or Ordinary Guides These are then nothing but shadows and frivolous pretences which having been of no force then cannot have any weight now We need not further say as the Author of Prejudices has done That it is certain that God can save men and even the most ignorant and simple That yet he does not offer them any other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That it is therefore necessary that that should be not only possible but easy to be known that yet notwithstanding it is clear that there is no way more difficult more dangerous and less fitted to all capacities then that of examining all its Tenets One may equally apply all those propositions to the Times of the Old Testament as well as to those of the New God could save men there He made no other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That ought then to have been easily known and that way of Examination was not less dangerous nor more fitted to all sorts of capacities then it is now Notwithstanding all that had not any force to hinder the Faithful from Examining it They cannot then in these days draw any consequence from what they so propose I affirm the same thing of all those other inconveniences which they invent to take away from every one that right of Examining the State of Religion by the Scripture and not wholly to believe their Pastors as that it would be to introduce a Principle of Schism and Division that every one might make himself a Judge of the Church that every one might make a Religion according to his Fancy that it is a great rashness for private Persons to imagine that they have more Understanding and more Wisdom than the whole Church and other such like things They may see that all those arguings are brought in vainly and to no purpose for if they were good and solid being so general as they are they would serve for all Times and all Places and would have their Force in favour of the Jewish Church as well as they would have them conclude in Favour of the Latin In the second place those Rights Priviledges and Promises which they would ascribe to the Christian Visible Church in exclusion of the Jewish are evidently null if they would make them depend precisely on Christianity For as I have before noted the Greek Church the Armenian the Nestorian and Aethiopian might pretend to them as justly as the Latin and yet the Latin applies them to her self in particular to the prejudice of all the others They ought then either to shew us what reason she has to appropriate those Rights Priviledges and general Promises and to make that that regards the Body of the Universal Church become particular to her or it is necessary they shew us that indeed they are not those Rights Priviledges and Promises that are common to all Christian Societies and that they are peculiar to the Latin Church But they know not how to do either the one or the other For neither Nature nor Grace have given any of those Priviledges or Rights to the Latins in exclusion from all other Christians They are neither more Lords of our Consciences nor more Infallible than others Christianity is Uniform throughout The Scripture also does not contain any one particular promise for them On the contrary Saint Paul says That in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Scythian nor Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all So that the Latin Church has no reason to draw that to her self which is a common Right nor to pretend any peculiar Priviledges But in the summ of all we have made it appear in the foregoing Chapters that those pretended Priviledges of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Christian Church Visible and those promises of perpetual Visibility in that Sence of Visibility wherein they understand it are Chimaeras which have not any Foundation either in Scripture or Reason And as to that right of Soveraign-Authority it cannot here be alledged but to very ill purpose For it is that which is yet in Dispute and whereof we have shewn the falsity from the example of the Jewish Church But they may draw from that example a consequence against the Latin one because that if that pretence would have been heretofore pernicious and destructive to Religion and the true Church as they may see it would have been it follows that it will be so yet in these days If then they cannot set before us any other difference between those two Terms and those two Churches which hinders my Conclusion the Argument will hold intire for it will not be enough to overthrow it meerly to say that the Christian Church has that Authority and that the Jewish had it not but they ought to give us a reason for it 3. But to proceed with our Reflexions If that Maxim whereof we treat were true that is to say if men were bound to give to their ordinary Pastors a blind obedience in the matters of Religion to see with their Eyes to tread in their Steps and to devest themselves of their own conduct to rest upon theirs the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ and his Doctrine during the time of his Preaching
those who demanded of Pilate his Death by crying against him away with him away with him Crucify him and those in fine who rejected the word of his Apostles and who instead of being converted by them persecuted them would be sufficiently justified in their bold unbeleif and that detestable Parricide which they committed on the Person of the Son of God For what were all those things but just consequences of that Principle They would not hearken to the Censures that Jesus Christ made of the Traditions and Doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees their Church admitted those Traditions They would not believe that Jesus was the true Messiah their Church had determined that whosoever did believe it should be cast out of their Synagogues They rejected the Proofs that he gave them from the Scripture it was not for them to judge of the true meaning of the Scripture and the Church understood it otherwise They demanded that he might be Crucified the Church had condemned him for a Seducer as an Enemy to Moses and the Law it was not for them to inform themselves any farther They rejected his Miracles the Church did so too and said that he cast out Devils by the power of Beelzebub They would not hearken to his Apostles the Authority of the Church forbad them Hitherto their conduct is within due Rules supposing that the Principle of the Author of prejudices might be just and lawful and those miserable People are very much obliged to him for furnishing them with arms wherewith to defend themselves 4. That Maxim of the Author of those Prejudices draws yet far greater absurdities after it It ministers accusations against Jesus Christ himself against his Apostles and all those who were converted by their Words If the Faithful by those Laws of their submission to the Church ought not to have any other Eyes than hers why did Jesus Christ present himself immediatly to the People when he should first of all have made known his call from Heaven the Glory of his Person and the Dignity of his Office to the Church to have made them own it by proving it to them before he Preach't to the People He was they will say her Lord and the Church her self would have had no Authority but by him that is true But if the People owed the Church an absolute obedience they would have owed it all that time that the Lord would have remained unknown He ought then to have began to make himself known to her and to have opened her Eyes that he might at the same time have opened those of all the People If Jesus Christ had been known to have been indeed what he was there is no doubt to be made but that he would alone have been heard without any dependance on the Church of which he is the Soveraign Lord but as yet he was not and till that knowledge had obtained the People would have been always bound according to the Principle of the Author of Prejudices not to have seen but by the Eyes of the Church to which God had subjected them To speak then home to this Question whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God the promised Messiah or whether he was not the Faithful being bound to believe nothing but what the Church should tell them he could not but have addrest himself to her and not to the Faithful People immediatly Nevertheless it is most true that he addressed himself neither to the Priests nor to the Scribes nor to the Pharisees nor to the Doctors he Preached his Gospel to the simple People out of them he took his Disciples and it was among them that he did almost all his Miracles in fine he himself gives thanks to his Father for that he had hid his Mysteries from the Wise and Prudent and had revealed them unto Babes Whence could such a conduct proceed so contrary to that Soveraign Authority wherewith at this day they would invest the Church that is the Pastors in respect of the Lay-men It is not difficult to understand that it was because Jesus Christ did no ways act from that Principle nor owned it for a good one for if he had owned it he had never suffered the People to have violated it he had made use of another way to make himself known to them and he would have employed the Ministry of the Church for that end 5. One may see the same thing of the Apostles if the People ought entirely to refer themselves to the Church in matters of Faith and Religion Why did the Apostles sollicit the Jews to embrace their Doctrine when they could not so much as hear them without being criminal They will say they had a commandment from their Master to Preach this Gospel I confess it but the Jews lived under a Church that had openly declared it self against their Preaching and they might tell them according to the Maxim of those Gentlemen It is vain that you Preach to us that you work Miracles that you alledge the Scriptures We see by the Eyes of the Church we hear by her Ears we march after her Steps and we devest our selves of our own guidance to rest our selves upon hers This is our Duty and the Law that is imposed on us why do you go about to tempt us to violate it Suppose we that a Jew after having heard one of those Divine and admirable Sermons of Saint Paul should have addrest himself to him and have demanded of him what Authority he pretended to give to that new Christian Church which he took such care to establish whether he did not mean that its Children should render a blind Obedience to it and that they should refer themselves wholly to their Pastors for deciding matters of Faith without intermedling themselves to search out the true sence of the Scripture Suppose yet that that great Apostle should have answered him according to that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices That it was true that the darkness of our understandings and our prejudices might be able to hinder us from seeing in the Scriptures those Truths that are clearly contained in them that a man could not assure himself that he was not of the number of those who deceived themselves That that doubt is terrible but that which yet infinitely heightens that dread which it must needs cause is that men are necessarily bound to chuse their Party and to make so weighty a choice to wit of that Religion that they ought to follow amidst the cumbrances of a thousand cares and a thousand worldly necessities that almost wholly take them up and that will allow them but a very little time to examine the Truths of that Religion That the greatest part of Mankind wanted necessary helps that the half of Christians could not tell how to read that others did not understand any Language but their own that others had so narrow and limited a Capacity that they could but very difficultly conceive the most easie
without a Case of necessity but only at the Solemn Feasts of Easter and Whitsuntide of giving of Milk and Honey to the Baptized of Administring the Eucharist to little Children after Baptism of Praying standing upon the Lords day and from Easter till Whitsuntide of Celebrating the Communion on the Evening of Fast-days of every ones carrying home with him a piece of the Bread of the Communion of distributing the Cup to all the faithful Communicants of receiving the Communion not on ones Knees but standing of mutually kissing one another before the Communion and divers others which the Latins have Abrogated On the other side how many Latin Traditions are there which the use of the Church of Rome Authorises at this Day of which we cannot find the least Trace in the Primitive Church and which from thence visibly discover themselves to be New and by consequence false and not Apostolical as the Worshipping of Images Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Use of Altars that of Lights or Tapers Masses without any Communion the Divine Service in a Tongue not understood by the People the Soveraign Authority of the Church of Rome over all other Churches Auricular Confession the Number of the seven Sacraments and as many more that the Primitive Church which came nearest to the Apostles never knew as we have often Justified from whence it follows that they are not Apostolical and descending from that only and last Revelation without which there is no word of God There is therefore nothing more improper to be the Rule of Faith then that pretended Tradition which is not established upon any certain Foundation which serves for a pretence to Hereticks which is embraced pro and con which changes according as times and places do and by the favour of which they may defend the greatest absurdiries by meerly saying that they are the Traditions which the Apostles Transmitted from their own Mouths to their Successours In a word if they would have us to believe a Mystery with a Divine Faith if they would that we should practise a Worship with a perswasion that it is agreeable to God they ought to shew us that that Mystery and that Worship proceeds from the Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles for without that all that is in the World is of Men's Invention since after Christ and his Apostles there has been no Revelation as we are both agreed But they can only shew us that by these two ways either by that of the Scripture in shewing us that those Mysteries and that Worship are conformable to it or by that of Transmission viva voce But as to that Transmission viva voce we are so far from being able to have a Divine certainty that we can't have so much as a humane for the Reasons which I have alleadged Which are that from the beginning of Christianity Hereticks have boasted of them and yet they were not believed for them that the Orthodox themselves were deceived in them alleadging them in false and vain things which the following Ages have rejected that the Schismatical Churches alledge them against the Latins and the Latins against the Schismaticks without one sides having any better ground then the other that the Church of Rome sets them before us for those New things which the first Ages never knew It remains therefore that the way of the Conformity to the Scripture upon which we are all agreed is that in which the Divine Revelation is contained CHAP. IX An Examination of the Objections which the Author of the Prejudices makes against the Scripture BUt this way of the Scripture according to the Author of the Prejudices is Infinite Ridiculous Impossible it has such consusions and length that we cannot come to the end of it with all our diligence The Principle of the Calvinists says he includes all these Maxims without which it cannot subsist 1. That the Church is not infallible in its decisions concerning the Faith 2. That Traditions do not make any part of the Rule of the Faith 3. That the Scripture contains in general all the points of Faith and so that whatsoever is not contained in the Scripture cannot be of Faith 4. That it contains them clearly and after a manner that is fitted to the under standing of all the World So that the certainty of that way and the hope that we can rationally conceive of it must depend upon the certainty of these Maxims Upon that we must note that it is not here Questioned whether the Scripture be Divine or not but that supposing that it is so he says only That he must demand of us those formal and decisive passages that prove those four Propositions And that when we do propose any one we must first be assured that it is taken out of a Canonical Book and to that effect we must examine the controversy of the Canonical Books and see by what Rules they may be known 2. We must be certain that that passage is conformable to the Original and to that effect we must consult the Originals 3. We must be certain that there are not different ways of Reading it that may weaken the proof 4. That we must narrowly see into the sence of the passage not to give it too great a Latitude nor to blind our selves with an appearance 5. That we must see whether there are no expressions or contrary passages which force us to take the passage in another sence 6. That we ought to consult the Interpreters of one side and of the other and to know what they say upon that passage 7. That after this we must come to the distinction of Fundamental points and those that are not Fundamental and prove it by Scripture 8. That we must examine the passages which each Sect produces in its Favour 9. That lastly after all this it is necessary that a man should trust his own Eyes and his Memory which failing to go through all the former reasons and preserving only a consused Idea of them will not further allow him to make a Just Judgment of things He concludes from thence that this way is not only interrupted with unconquerable difficulties and obstacles but that it is of a length so little proportioned to mens minds that it is evident that it cannot be that which God has chosen to instruct us in the Truths by which he would lead us to Salvation For says he if they themselves who make a profession of spending all their lives in the Study of Divinity ought to Judge that Examination to be above their abilities what will become of those who are obliged to spend the greatest part of their Time in other Occupations What will become of Judges Magistrates Tradesmen Labourers Souldiers Women Children who have as yet a very weak Judgment What will become of those who do not understand so much as any of the Languages into the which the Bible is Translated What will become of the blind who know not
are upon For if they mean That the Society or Church of the Protestants is new in respect of the State wherein it was or of that external form which it had immediately before the Reformation we shall voluntarily agree that it is made new in that sence after the same manner that the Scripture calls the Regenerate a new Man or as God promises to give us a new heart or as they call a House repaired and put into its natural State a new House That would speak the Favour God shew'd to our Fathers in re-establishing the Christian Society in that Just and lawful State wherein it ought to be according to its first Establishment and that that State is very much different from that wherein it was immediately before the Reformation This is that which we do not deny and are so far from it that on the contrary we praise and glorify God for it But if they mean that we have made a new Church that is to say one essentially differing from that which Jesus Christ and his Apostles would establish in the World and which has always subsisted even to our days or that in all that which depends on us we have not re-established it in its first and lawful State this is what we deny and in this sence which is the only one that can render the Accusations of our Adversaries just we maintain that we have not in the least made a new Church In a word we say that the Church of Jesus Christ has subsisted down from the Apostles to us inclusively in all that which it has Essentially and that she yet subsists at this day among us but that having changed her State or External Form in the Ages that preceeded the Reformation she was re-established in her just and lawful State by the Reformation of our Fathers which no ways hinders but that she was and might always be the same Church To make this Truth to be the better understood we need only to clear on the one side what that Essence of the Church is that ought always to remain immovable to shew that it may be but one and the same Church by descent and uninturrepted Succession and on the other side what State it is that she has suffered change in and how it could be altered and repaired The Essence of the Church consists in this That it is a Body of divers persons united together in the Commnion of one only True God under one only Jesus Christ their Head and Mediatour and it is Jesus Christ himself that has given us this Idea of it when he says that This is life Eternal to know the only True God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent That Definition which we give of the Church supposes 1. The subject or matter whereof the Church is composed which are divers men divers persons united among themselves and with God 2. It supposes the Necessary means without which that Communion cannot be which are the word of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit 3. It contains not only the True Faith Charity Hope which are the natural bonds of that Communion but all the other Christian Vertues also as Worship Adoration Truth Obedience Thanksgiving Justice Temperance c. which are the the duties to which that Communion engages us 4. It comprehends in it further all the fruits that we gather from that Communion as Remission of Sins Peace and Tranquillity of Soul Consolation in Afflictions Succours in Temptations c. 5. In fine it includes all the Rights that necessarily follow that Communion as that of being joyned together in an External Society that of Publick Assemblies that of the Ministry that of the Sacraments and that of External Government and Discipline See here that which is Essential to the Church for I call that Essential without which the Church cannot subsist and which yet is sufficient to make it subsist that which cannot subsist if that Church fail to subsist and that which cannot be wanting if there be a Church As to the State in respect of which it suffers changes it consists in all that that depends on the different disposition of Times Places and Persons For Example To have the Bodily presence of Jesus Christ to have Apostles and Evangelists for its Pastors to have the Miraculous gifts of healing that of Tongues that of the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Faithful by Visible Symbols that of Prophecy and that of an external and infallible direction and instruction is a State wherein the Church was in the Time of its Birth but which was changed in the other Times that followed To have Pastors illustrious for Zeal Learning and Piety as a Saint Augustine a Saint Basil a Saint Chrysostom is a State wherein it was not always nor every where but in some Times and Places only To be flourishing and in Peace without Persecution without Schism without Error is a State wherein it has neither been always nor in all Places nor in respect of all those persons who have composed it but which it has been in in some Times and Places only and with respect to some Persons We ought then to set down in their proper Order those things which belong to the State of the Church and to its Essence and which by Consequence are liable to change as to be extended every where or in the greatest part of the World to have a multitude or the greatest number Temporal Splendor or outward Glory Peace whether in regard of those without or in respect of those within Liberty in External Profession Visibility of Assemblies Purity of the Ministry Holiness of External Worship Form of Government that of Discipline and that of Liturgies an Actual Bond of the Parts of the Church in one Body of External Communion and the Actual Exercise of the Ministry or if you will the Actual Presence of the Pastors All those are things that do not absolutely belong to the Essence of the Church but only to its State or Condition and of which it may be sometimes spoyled either wholly or in Part without being absolutely destroyed It may be restrained to a few places and a few persons and therefore it is called in some places of Scripture a little Flock she may be so in her low State We are says Saint Paul not many wise not many mighty not many noble but God has chosen the weak things of this World to confound the strong She may be in Trouble and in Affliction through the Persecution of Infidels as she was under the Heathen Emperours or in Fighting against Hereticks as she has been almost always she may lose the Visibility of her Assemblies as she did in most places in the Time of Decius and Dioclesian she may find her Ministry corrupted as it hapned in the Time of the Arrians she may see her external Worship sullied by Actions of superstition and Idolatry as it fell out in Judah and Israel in the days of the Prophets As to
in it no sooner I have heard it has been the wish of some Great Divines but their own Employments hindred them from Effecting it and it might have been expected that it should have moved somebody to have attempted it upon that very account because they desired it For since the Gift of Tongues is ceased and those Inspired Linguists have been long ago silenced Translation is none of the worst ways of supplying that absent Grace neither can it be accounted beneath any man by his Industry to retrieve a departed Miracle I could wish he had come forth in all the Ornaments of our Language as he did at first in those of his own Those Ceremonies of Speech though in themselves not absolutely necessary and add not much to the Substance yet they contribute not a little to the Decency and pleasing part of an Author for there is a Delightful Prospect arising from the Agreeable Mixture of the Colours of Language without which a Book is never the less solid but with which it is much more perswading However he appears the more in his own Dimensions the thinner his Garments are and the closer they sit about him I shall make no Apology for the Author because I know nothing in him that needs it unless some should mistake some of his expressions about Episcopacy Where if he has let fall any thing that may offend he has these two things at least for his excuse First that he lived under an external constitution of a Church that did not exercise that way of Government Secondly he himself tells us those that he mentions were only such who were of the Popish Communion and only as such he uses them I shall not detain the Reader any longer from the Book it self only I am to desire him that whatsoever faults he finds in the Preface may not be imputed any further to the Book it self For the more mistakes there are in it the more proper it is for that Perfect Piece it is set before as the Errors of the Church of Rome had no small share in the occasion of our Religion and may in some sense be stiled The Preface to the Reformation The Epistle Dedicatory of the Author To the Right Honourable The MARQUESS of RUVIGNY Lieutenant-General of His Majesties Armies AND General Deputy of the Protestants in FRANCE MY LORD MY first thoughts after I had read the Books of the Prejudices were not to write any Answer to it For besides that I saw in that Book nothing else but the same Accusations from which our Fathers and we have already been frequently justified and that moreover they were wrote there in so extreamly passionate and invenomed a stile for my own particular I did not think my self bound to follow every where those persons who seem to make it their design to load me with the number of their Volumes affecting to take me for a Party in all the Works that they daily publish and even in those that are most remote from the chief Subject of our Controversy Yet when I perceived the loud Out-cries that these Gentlemen and their followers made about their Prejudices to draw the applause of the World to themselves as if they had silenced us and our Reformation remained over thrown under the weight of their Victory I judged it necessary to enter upon this new labour and the deference that I had for those who exhorted me to undertake it has brought forth this Treatise that I now give to the publick Those who shall take the pains to read it will find that I have not meerly tied my self to the Book that I confute but that to save my self the labour of doing it at twice I have considered the matter in its first Principles and examinëd it in its just extent that I might be the better able to judge of it I acknowledg the Subject Treated on required more Learning readiness and leasure then I was master of but it may be also they will find in the plain and natural way wherein I have handled it something more easy then if I had employed more Art and Meditation in it It is this makes me hope that when I shall not fully have answered the expectations of those who have engaged me in this work yet they will not read this Defence without some satisfaction However it be My Lord I take the boldness to present it to you and to entreat the favour of you to receive it as a token of the acknowledgment that I have for so much goodness as you have testified towards me I am perswaded that those of our Communion in this Kingdom will very heartily consent that my weak pen should also express the sentiments that they all have of your person and of the cares that you take to uphold their common interests I will also affirm that your Merit is so generally acknowledged that when nothing shall be disputed but the just praises that are due to your prudence to the wisdom that appears throughout your whole Conduct to the inviolable Principles of Honour and Justice that are the perpetual Rules of your Actions and in a word to the great and solid Vertues that you practise with such exactness they can assure themselves that there will be no difference about that between those of the one and the other Communion But all those Qualities that they take notice of in You how Rich and Resplendent soever they are even in the eyes of those who are destitute of them would be nothing else but false dazling light if they were not accompanied with real Piety which only gives a value to all the Moral Virtues You are not ignorant My Lord you in whom we saw it but a few Months ago how your Soul ready to take its flight trembled and remained confounded in the view of all that humane Righteousness and that you could find no rest in your Spirit any where else then in the bosom of Religion and Piety This alone was that which gave you the Tranquillity of Soul which taught all those who had the honour to come near your Bed after what manner a good man who could rest assured of Gods Mercy and the Grace of Jesus Christ might look Death in the Face It is this that has yet prolonged your days or to speak better that has restored Life to you by an extraordinary blessing of heaven little different from that which Hezechias heretofore received as the fruit of his humiliation and prayer Continue MY LORD to lay out that life which has been given you again in the service of God and in the employments to which your calling engages you and of which you have so great an account to render Those employments are certainly difficult and if I may take the boldness to say it they are oppressing through their quality through their numbers and through the accidents that either accompany or follow them But he who has called you to them will give you ability to discharge
Mystery of Iniquity which had began to work or to form it self could not be conceiv'd of but under the Idea of a secret Plot whose lowest Foundations were laid in the very days of the Apostles and which must at length after a long Train of Ages have come to its utmost pitch and be manifested And as to that other Passage it supposes in the first place a Captivity of the People of God Go out says it of Babylon Secondly a Captivity of that People who did not yet fail to be the People of God Go out of her says it my People And in the third place a Captivity in which while they abode they were in danger of partaking of the sins of their Oppressours Least it adds in partaking of its sins Yee partake also of its plagues All that formed an Idea of a Church that groan'd under the weight of a great Corruption which easily gave way to that thought that it might possibly be the Latin Church as soon as any other and that it might as well fall out in the times of our Fathers as in any other season CHAP. V. More Particular Reflections upon that Priviledge of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Church and of its Authority ANy one may now see methinks from what I have laid down what Judgment ought to be made of that pretended Infallibility that the Latin Church ascribed to it self and by what means they would shut our eyes and reduce us to a slavish Obedience We shall yet nevertheless make here some reflexions upon it and see whether it has any solid Foundation and any Justice in that claim 1. But before we proceed farther it will be necessary to know what they understand by that Infallible Church and examine all the Sences that may be given to this Proposition that the Church cannot err For our Adversaries themselves very differently understand it In the first place then if they would plainly say That that which has been believ'd and universally practis'd by all those who have compos'd the Body of the visible Church throughout the extent of all Ages is Infallibly true I say that it is a very useless Principle since to speak according to men it is impossible to know that which has been so believ'd and universally practis'd So that one need say no more against it but to send back those men to an Infallibility of that nature Who could make a search so just so clear and so general as he ought to assure himself of the unanimous consent of all the particular Members unless he could raise all that were dead and understand them one after another I acknowledge that we have the Books of the Antients but all have not wrote and who can warrant us that those who have not wrote had the same Sentiments with those that have Who can warrant that the many Books that are lost were not in very many points contrary to those that are extant Who can teach us nicely to distingush what those Authors have wrote in Copying out of or in imitating one another from their true and natural Sentiments and that which they have wrote on their own heads from that which they have wrote as Witnesses of the general Belief of their Ages Who can assure us that they were not sometimes deceived in taking for the general Belief or Practise of the Church those things which were not so For the same Case happens in these very days that as to those things that seem so exceeding clear there are yet a sort of men who would perswade us that we do not very well and perfectly know what the General belief of the Church of Rome is and that we may very easily deceive our selves and deceive others how much more then heretofore when those things were by nothing near so clearly decided and so manifest as they are now at this day Who can exactly enough tell us what those Articles were wherein all the Antients were universally agreed and those wherein they did not agree since it has very often fell out that one and the same Author has wrote things very contrary upon one and the same Subject Who can assure us that what three or four Antient Authors had wrote after an agreeable manner was not one of those particular deviations from the Truth which one may often discover in them which does not at all hinder but that the contrary Opinion may be more received and more general In fine there is nothing so vain and so fallacious as that pretended Infallibility of the Church if they restrain it to those Doctrines which shall be found established by the unanimous consent of all Persons and of all Ages Moreover Such a kind of Infallibility would not only have been no hindrance to our Fathers from entring on an examination of the matters of Religion but it would also have obliged them to it For they must always have known whether that which was taught and practis'd in the Church in their days concerning Faith and Worship had been confirm'd by the consent of all the foregoing Ages which they could never have known but by such an examination So that those who in these days dispute with us about the right of the Reformation will never find any reason on their side The Church of Rome must needs be very Infallible with them but it can be so but in one respect I would say in those matters wherein She agrees with the Church throughout all Ages and with all those Persons who Compose it which could not in the least have taken away her possibility of erring in those matters wherein she should withdraw her self from the Antient Church and by consequence she must submit her self her decisions her Doctrines and her Customs to a Rule and an Authority that was superiour according to which they ought to be examined 2. If they understand by it That the Church in every Age cannot err that is to say for Example That that which was believed and generally practis'd and beyond all controversy in the Church in the days of our Fathers could not be otherwise then true and good I say that they make this a Principle which cannot be to any purpose and from which they cannot draw any advantage For how could they assure themselves that all those who made up the Body of the Visible Church a little before the Reformation did well approve of the Doctrines that they then taught and the Worship that was then practis'd and how could they distinctly and precisely affirm that any such thing had been generally received For it cannot be imagin'd under a pretence that some certain Opinions had been ordinarily taught in the Schools or that certain Devotions had been commonly used that they should be brought into the publick Service and spread over their Books under that same pretence It cannot I say be imagin'd that there had not been many in the World who disapprov'd them and look'd on them as errours and abuses altho' they
Fathers an Infallibility It is without doubt the Kings pleasure that we should submit our selves to his Officers and that we should obey them but he does not mean to advance them to be Infallible nor to ordain us to obey them if they shall happen to command us these things that are directly contrary to his service and to that Fidelity which we owe to our Soveraign It is then True that all those Exhortations to hear our Pastors and to obey their words are always to be restrain'd by this clause understood as far as their words shall be conformable to that of God that they can never go beyond that and that they cannot from thence draw any Priviledge of Infallibility 4. As these Gentlemen let slip nothing that may serve for their Interests so they ordinarily make use of that passage in the 18th Chapter of St. Matthew where Jesus Christ ordains that if any one receive an injury from another he is to reprove him between himself and him alone and if that first complaint signifies nothing then he must take witnesses with him and if he neglect to hear those witnesses he is to tell it to the Church and if he neglect to hear the Church he is to be unto us as a Heathen and a Publican All that that follows in the close of that discourse of Jesus Christ shews that he speaks there neither of Faith nor Worship but of some private quarrels that we might have against our Brethren to be taken away and of the use of that Discipline For the mind of our Lord is that before we break off absolutely with our Brethren we should observe all the Rules of Charity and that we should there make use of the Church but if he would refuse to hear the Church that in that case it was allowed us to treat him no longer as a Brother but as a real stranger Who sees not that if they would draw any thing of consequence from that passage they ought to pretend that the Church is Infallible not in matters of Faith for they are not medled with there but in matters of Fact and in the Censures that it gives upon private Quarrels in which nevertheless all the World agrees that she may be deceiv'd And therefore it is that these Gentlemen are wont to alleadge these last words Tell it to the Church and if he will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as the Heathens and Publicans and they alleadge them also as separated from the sequel of that Discourse because otherwise they could not but observe that they would signify nothing to them 5. In fine they produce those words of St. Paul to Timothy These things write I unto thee hoping to come unto thee shortly But if I tarry long that thou mayest know how to behave thy self in the House of God which is the Church of the living God the pillar and ground of the Truth How can say they the Church be the pillar and ground of Truth if it is not Infallible in the Doctrines it proposes as of Faith and in the Worship which it Practises But what likelyhood is there that he would have established an opinion so important as that of the Infallibility of the Latin Church on such Metaphorical terms which St. Paul did not make use of upon the sight of any Infallibility which should respect no other but the Latin Church in particular and which should much rather have respected the Church of Ephesus or the other Churches of Asia where Timothy was then when the Apostle wrote to him which yet did not fail of falling into Error in Terms which may be explained in divers sences and which have been appli'd to divers particular Bishops without yet pretending to raise them up to be Infallible what colour I say is there that they can prove the Infallibility of the Church of Rome It appears in the end of that discourse of St. Paul that he never thought of making the Church Infallible for in all that Chapter he aims at nothing else then to set down the duties of Bishops and Deacons and after having markt out in particular some qualities with which they ought to be endow'd and from what Vices they ought to be more especially exempt after what manner they ought to govern themselves he adds in the close of all That he wrote all that to his disciple to the end he might know how to behave himself in the House of God which is the Church of the Living God the pillar and ground of Truth Who sees not that that Infallibility comes not in at all to the purpose in that close of the Discourse Let the Bishops says he and the Deacons take heed they be wise sober c. That they hold the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience that their Wives should be honest and faithful in all things that their Children should be well educated c. And that which I say in general I apply also to thee Timothy to the end thou mayst live unblameably in the House of God in the Church of the living God Add according to the Interpretation of these Gentlemen Which Church is Infallible and cannot err and there is nothing of any natural Connexion in it On the contrary that conceit of the Infallibility of the Church according to the Principle that our Adversaries makes use of in the Doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints would harden them in security for let them do as they will all would go well and after whatsoever manner the Pastors govern the Church could never be corrupted nor its Truth be lost Which would seem far more proper to inspire negligence into the Bishops then to animate them to do their duty In effect if they cannot tell how to exhort men by motives of that nature They ought then to confess the Truth to wit that these words The Pillar and Ground of Truth note the end and natural design of the Church that for which she is made and to which she is called which is to sustain and bear the Truth and to make it subsist in the World and so the discourse of the Apostle appears very just and well connected Behold says he after what manner the Bishops ought to frame their course and after what sort thou oughtest to live in the Church of God in behaving thy self in it so as remembring that God has appointed it to be the pillar and ground of his Truth Live therefore in that manner that may answer that end or that natural appointment of the Church Just as if the King exhorting one of the Officers of his Parliament to do his duty should tell him That he liv'd in a body that was the Pillar and Ground of Justice and the Rights of the Crown that is to say which is naturally ordain'd for the maintaining Justice in the State and to defend the Rights of the Crown But as that speech of the Prince would not establish any priviledge of
they make use of the Visibility of the Church to prove its Infallibility The True Church of Jesus Christ says one ought always to be Visible always plainly to be discerned whence it follows that she cannot err for if it were possible for her to do so she could be no longer acknowledged as a True Church and there would be no more means proposed to all men for their Salvation None can be saved out of the Communion of the True Church since it is impossible for any to be saved without Faith and that according to the Apostle none can have Faith without that Preaching which ought to be made by the Ministers of the Church The True Church ought then to be always Visible to the end that all men should set themselves under its Ministry to obtain Salvation or that at least they should be inexcusable if they did not so place themselves and by Consequence it is necessary that she should be Infallible To this Reason which alone makes a long Controversie and about which they make very long Chapters they add some passages of Scripture from whence they conclude that the Church is always Visible and some others that contain in their Opinion not only the promises of a perpetual Visibility but of a Visibility shining with such a brightness and such splendour that the True Church may be known to Strangers and Infidels to be so To Answer this Argument of theirs in the first place I say That the True Church may be so far from being always discernable by all men as they pretend it to be as that one cannot say so much as that all men have always been able to know that there has been a Society of Christians in the World for not to alledge that the Christian Church in its Original then when the Apostles were as yet in Jerusalem or thereabouts was very little known to the rest of the world not to say that the knowledge of that new Society did not so soon spread it self over the Roman Empire nor in the bordering Countries that the most of the people were ignorant for some time of what it was to be Christians it cannot be denyed that many Ages had slipt away before that the most considerable part of the Earth as all America could have any knowledge that there were any Christians in the World How then can any one say the True Church is always Visible and always discernable to all men Is it because those Americans before these last Ages were not men or is it because they were not bound to work out their own Salvation They ought then in good earnest to acknowledge that God is most free in the dispensing of the means of Salvation which he proposes to whom he will and refuses to whom he will Till the external Communion with the True Church shall be the only means of and absolutely necessary to Salvation none can conclude that she ought to be perpetually visible and discernable by all men For it frequently happens that God for most just reasons but which we ought not to search out with too great Curiosity may withdraw from men the external means of their Salvation and yet notwithstanding he does not fail to convince by other ways which render them inexcusable worthy of Condemnation Men are bound to place themselves in the true Church then when it is discernable to them to be so but when it is not so as it is not at this day to the Southern Nations we ought not to believe that God will damn them for not having put themselves into it they have other crimes enough to be punished for without making God to violate his Justice in that respect See here what I say for the defending of Gods Justice and to let you see the rashness of those Arguments which suppose that God is bound to make those Gentlemen Infallible to the end that he may condemn men with some reason But further I do not deny that one cannot in some sence say that God has always preserved some True Church Visible upon Earth but that one ought not to play with those ambiguous Terms it is necessary to make a distinction and to shew clearly in what sence it may and in what sence it may not be found to be True For beside that that I have said in the first place That the True Church is not Visible nor to be generally known by all we ought not to imagine that the True Church must be always Visible in one certain place that is to say that one only People one Society one body which has been for time a True Church may not in the end lose that quality after whatsoever manner that comes to pass whether it be by an entire forsaking of Christianity or whether it be by an extreme and general Corruption of that Religion God has sometimees taken away his Candlestick from the midst of a people according to that threatning which he made to the Church of Ephesus I will come quickly unto thee and take away thy Candlestick out of its place except thou repent The greatest part of the African Churches which heretofore were so flourishing are now no longer so and there is not any place upon the Earth neither Paris nor Constantinople nor Jerusalem nor Antioch nor Rome nor Avignon neither the Latin Church nor the Greek nor the Armenian nor the Aethiopian neither the Chair of Saint Peter nor that of Saint James nor that of Saint John nor that of Saint Denis that can promise it self that it shall never perish There are no such promises in the Scripture and it is a speech very criminal in the Mouth of any Church whatsoever it be if she says I sit a Queen and am no widow and shall see no sorrow When therefore they shall say that God keeps up always a True Church in the World let them remember that it is in a way Independant on any Places and Sees or if that restriction will not please them let them produce those clear and solid and peculiar priviledges to us which may set the Latin Church above all its Fellows For as to that that some set before us that saying of Jesus Christ to S. Peter I have prayed for thee that thy Faith fail not it is clear from a plain view of that passage that it only regards the person of Saint Peter with relation to that violent Temptation wherewith he was hurried in the House of the High Priest and under which there wanted but a little of his Faith having wholly perished and that it does not in the least concern his pretended Successours whereof there is not so much as one word in all the Scripture I say the same to that Commandment that Jesus Christ gave him to Feed his sheep which respects only his re-establishment in the Office of an Apostle after his fall nor is there any promise adjoyned for his Successors nor for their See whereof there is not a
word mentioned either there or any where else And as to that passage Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build my Church c. Whether they understand it of that Confession which Saint Peter had made or whether they refer it to his person I say that no one can understand it of his Successors since there is not any mention made of them either directly or indirectly For when the See of Rome was not when it had never yet been The Church did not fail of being built upon that Confession of Saint Peter comprehended Jesus Christ upon whom the Church is every way built but also because that Confession of Saint Peter or Saint Peter Confessing was as one of the Chief Stones in that mystical Building which is not left alone for Jesus Christ who is not only the Foundation but the Soveraign Architect has added many others in all Ages and will always joyn others to them till the Building be intirely finished that is to say till God fulfilled the Decree of his Election But to go on with our Discourse of the Visibility of the True Church I affirm in the third place that we ought to know very well what a True Church Visible is For we ought not to imagine that all those persons who compose that Visible Society should be that True Church None but those True Believers I would say those who joyn to their external Profession of Christianty a true and sincere Piety are really the Church of Jesus Christ and as for the others that is to say the worldly Prophane and Hypocritical they are but the Church in appearance only and not indeed For having no inward Calling which consists in Faith and Love they do not belong to the Mystical Body of our Saviour nor are they of his Communion Notwithstanding they do not fail to be mixt with the Faithful by reason of that external profession as if they really were in the same Religious Society with them What then is the Visibility of the True Church as to us It is not that we can distinctly and with any certainty affirm Behold these be the Truly faithful of Jesus Christ None but but God alone can know them after that distinct manner and and without a possibility of being deceived But this we may say of that Visible Society that Vnder that Ministry and in that Communion God preserves and raises the truly Faithful Whence we may from this Judgment with Solidity and Truth and I may say also without a possibility of being deceived that there is a True Visible Church In that sence I declare that there has always been some way or other a True Church Visible upon Earth not but that God can make it wholly disappear to the Eyes of men whensoever it shall please him to do so without doing men any wrong or any breach of his promises since he has without doubt extraordinary ways to beget Faith in the hearts of his Children and to keep them on in that course and to lead them in the end unto Salvation without making use either of the publick Assemblies or Ministry but only because we ought not to believe that there ever hapned since the first rise of Christianity an Eclipse so full and intire that one could not some way say There is a Society in which God does keep the truly Faithful I say after some way For as that Judgment depends on two things the one to be able to know a Society and a Ministry and the other to know that under that Ministry and in that Society a Man may work out his own Salvation in respect of the first it is necessary to distinguish between two seasons the one of Liberty and Prosperity where the Church has its Assemblies and exercises its Ministry openly in the face of all the World For then she is much more visible then she would be otherwise that is to say it is far more easy to be known what Society and what Ministry that is Such was the State of the Church under Constantine and other Christian Emperours and it is in such times as those that the promises of Its outward splendour if there are any such in Scripture are accomplished The other season is that of its Afflictions and Persecution such was that of the first Century of the Church under the Pagan Emperours and the Enemies of Christianity For none can deny that then the Church was less discernable by its Assemblies not only because they were more private and less exposed to the publick view but also yet further because the name of Christian had been defamed by a thousand calumnies and charged with a thousand false imputations which made the knowledge of the Church to be far more difficult And it will be to no purpose to say That then the Church was visible and illustrious by the blood of its Martyrs For the blood of its Martyrs did not in the least hinder the accusing of the Christians of most odious crimes that which hindred its being liable to be easily known Those Accusations were as a Cloud before the eyes of the Common people which was necessarily to be discipated before they could come to know what Christianity was So that the True Church is more or less Visible according to the difference of its Seasons As to the second thing which is to know that one may be saved in that Society and under that Ministry it is necessary that we distinguish of the two States or Conditions wherein that Society may be found The one is a more pure State then when the word of God is preached without mixtures of the Doctrines of men when the publick Worship is perform'd without superstitions and the Sacraments plainly administred according to their Primitive Institution and when generally Religion is established taught and observed after the same manner wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles left it to the World In that Condition it is certain that the True Church in very visible and very discernable for it is easy to behold all the Characters of its Truth which only consist in its Conformity to that lively primitive and natural Image of Christianity which God has left us in his Holy Scriptures But it is not less certain that a Church may fall into a quite contrary Condition that is to say into a State of Corruption then when it adds to divine Truths strange and adulterate Doctrines when it mingles superstitions with the true Worship of God and when in stead of a just Government it exercises an insolent and absolute Dominion over Mens Consciences in one word then when all things appear so confused and in that disorder that one can scarce any more see any traces of that beautiful and glorious Image of Christianity which I have before spoke of to shine forth In that Condition I affirm that True Church is very hard to be known for howsoever it were most Visible in quality of a Church because its Assemblies might be
souls but to make Jesus Christ reign who is the only Monarch of the Church We Preach not our selves saith St. Paul but Jesus Christ the Lord and our selves your servants for Jesus sake and elsewhere he says that he was made a Minister of the Church of God All these passages by themselves are very concluding but taken together make up a Demonstration that will persuade all men who are not prepossest with prejudice For what likelyhood is there that God would have filled his Scriptures with so many things contrary to this Dominion if he had had a design to invest the Pastors of his Church with an Authority so absolute over mens Consciences and of making them Soveraign Lords of their Faith Is not that Authority after the way they pretend to it a real Empire and a much more powerful Empire than the Temporal ones which they set up over the Hearts and Souls of men where the others do but establish theirs over their bodies Bellarmine and Du Perron busie themselves very much in eluding the force of that passage where Jesus Christ forbids his Disciples that Dominion They say that he forbids not Dominion but the manner of that Dominion that is to say that he would not have them affect that Dominion nor that they should Rule Tyrannically or with violence but that nevertheless he would have them Rule Who sees not the absurdity of this answer For when Jesus Christ said The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship but it shall not be so with you it is clear that the distinction that he makes between Kings and Pastors falls upon that Dominion and not upon the manner of that Dominion I confess that he forbids the affectation of that Dominion but I affirm that he forbids also that Dominion it self as it appears from his words for he says not the Kings of the Gentiles affect Dominion but he says they do exercise that Dominion and that it shall not be so with them which shews he would distinctly say that they should not exercise Lordship Else it was necessary that in those words Jesus Christ should have set down some difference between the Government of the Gentile Nations and that of his Church But that difference cannot consist in this that they ought not to affect the manner of Dominion in his Church for that would make him say that they ought or might lawfully affect it in the Civil Government which yet is not true And as to what they say of a Tyrannical and violent Domination they evidently deceive themselves For the contest of his Disciples was no ways about that violent Dominion nor about the gentleness of that Dominion but about the Dominion it self they strove among themselves which of them should be greatest Whence it follows that Jesus Christ who answers to their thoughts speaks of a Dominion whatsoever it be and not simply of a Tyrannical one To which I add that those other Passages to which they know not how to apply those evasions learly determine the sence of that saying of Jesus Christ 2. But the Scripture is not contented only to forbid that Soveraign and Absolute Authority to the Ministers of the Church it farther gives the Faithful a right to examine that which they teach and at the same time obliges them to do it to separate the Good from the Bad. Hence it is that Jesus Christ who would have his Disciples do all that that the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in the Chair of Moses commanded them to do yet would have them discern also their false Doctrines and to take heed of them Take heed to your selves says he of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Saducees which in the close he explains of the leaven of their Doctrine In the sight of that Saint John gives this Lesson to the Faithful Not to believe every spirit but to try the spirits whether they be of God and Saint Paul To prove all things and to hold fast that which is good The same Apostle elsewhere prays That they may have an abundant measure of all judgment and knowledge That they might try things that differ that they might be sincere and without offence until the day of Jesus Christ And there where he lets us understand that the Pastors in building upon the Foundation might heap up Wood Hay Stubble as well as Gold Silver and Pretious Stones it is evident from that Advertisement that he engages them to make a just discerning of those things It is not less clear that he supposes in the Faithful an Examination and a judgment in respect of those things which their Pastors should teach them when he has recourse to their Testimony for the Justification of his Doctrine We have not says he handled the word of God deceitfully but have commended our selves to every mans Conscience in the sight of God by the manifestation of the Truth Ye are witnesses and God also says he to the Thessalonians how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved our selves among you that believe But what more can be added to the force of his words which we find in his Epistle to the Galatians If we our selves or an Angel from Heaven preach to you another Gospel than we have preached to you let him be accursed Who can deny that he forbids by those words that blind obedience which they would have us give at this day to the Pastors of the Church and that he does not on the contrary command us to examine their Preaching by the Rule of the Primitive and Original Gospel Who sees not that that exaggeration which he uses serves but to let us see the importance the necessity the force of that obligation which he would lay upon us and how inviolable and indispensable it is He commands us not only to make a sincere discernment he does not only speak of a simple rejecting of that that shall be Forreign and Alien to it and shall not agree with the Gospel He enjoyns an Anathema an Execration He would not only have us pronounce it against men indefinitely or against those whom the Councils and the Popes shall declare Hereticks he declares that it ought to be pronounced against an Apostle against himself the most famous among the Apostles against him who had had Visions and Revelations who had been caught up into the third Heaven and who had laboured with such an abundant expence of his blood and of his Life for Jesus Christ This is not all yet he enjoyns the same against an Angel from Heaven if he undertook to Preach another Gospel than that which he has Preached unto us What can be said more weighty What is there in the Church beyond an Anathema What is there upon Earth among men greater than Saint Paul What is there in Heaven above an Angel And shall the ordinary Pastors the Prelates Patriarchs Popes and Councils be exempted from that Rule when the Apostles and Angels themselves are not
if you would give to the simpler sort to those Babes for Example whereof Jesus Christ speaks that his Mysteries have been revealed unto them if you give them I say that right and liberty to judge of that important and fundamental Question to wit Whether the Call of a man be Extraordinary and Divine or whether it be not so whether his Miracles are those of a true Minister of God or of a false Prophet whether it be a true Angel of Light or a disguised Angel of darkness and to judge of all those things after the Church and against the Church I see no Reason why they should refuse them the right and liberty of judging also of its Doctrine and the points of Religion whereof the true knowledge is by nothing near so difficult God had forewarned his People that they should not give themselves over to be deceiv'd by the first appearances of Miracles and he had appointed that they should judge of them by the Doctrine they accompanied Whence it follows that the discerning of Miracles and judging of that Doctrine are two inseparable things and that their right belongs to the same persons If there arise saith God among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other Gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams For the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart It appears from thence that the way for men to judge well of Miracles is to examine the Doctrine of him that works them So that if they will a gree to give the people a right to discern Miracles they cannot take away from them that of discerning that Doctrine they uphold Jesus Christ supposes the same thing when he says that there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and that they shall work great signs and wonders to seduce if it were possible the very Elect. For how could they otherwise discern those Miracles of the false Prophets but by examining their words So a famous man of the Roman Communion has not scrupled to write that we are bound to reject Miracles and those men who make use of them then when they are joyned with a Doctrine which the Church has condemned his words are considerable and very well deserve to be transcrib'd The Application says he and direction of a miracle to prove the Truth of a Doctrine is an enterprise so rash and so scandalous that it deserves to be punished There is not any Catholic in the World who knows his Creed and understands it that can be capable of such a persuasion What if the appearance of a Miracle is contrary to the definitions of the Church can any one hesitate or doubt whether it would be better to adhere to the Church supported by the truth of a Miracle or to deny the truth of a Miracle founded upon the Authority of the Church Saint Peter has taught us a great while since what we are to do on that occasion He had been an eye Witness of the Transfiguration of our Saviour and of that glory that lay hid under the Vail of a Suffering and Mortal state and yet nevertheless he trusts more in the obscurity of Prophets than to the clear and manifest experience of his Eyes we have a more sure word of Prophesie The Authority of the Church which is in nothing less than that of the Prophets breaks in pieces all those reasons that oppose it and we ought to take to our selves in regard of the Church that which Saint Peter says with respect to the Prophets To which we do well that we take heed gathering together all our attention to know the true sence of the Church and turning aside from all the Miracles and all those Reasons the men propound to us to make us call into question that which we know the Church to have determined We may see clearly by that passage how far one may carry that Principle of the Authority of the Church in the thoughts of those that admit of it that is to say even to make Miracles themselves submit to it He says that we ought to Collect all our attention to know the true Sentiments of the Church and to turn aside from all those Miracles which would make us call into question that which the Church has determined He says that to go about to make use of Miracles for the proving of a Doctrine that is condemned by the Church is a rash and scandalous enterprise and such as deserves to be punished In effect if they suppose that Maxim that we ought to give to the Church an absolute obedience to see with her Eyes and to rest upon her Conduct those Miracles could not make them be heard whom the Church should have condemned and by which they should have been looked on as false Miracles the Consequence is good and just But because that very thing applied to the times of the first rise of Christianity justifies the Unbeleivers condemns the proceedings of Jesus Christ and his Appostles accuses those of rashness who have believed on their preaching destroys the Gospel and overthrows the Christian Church it is a manifest proof that that Maxim it self is false and rash since those Consequences that arise from it are so detestable that they leave neither to Jesus Christ nor to the Apostles any way to make their Gospel to be heard by men with a good Conscience and the care of their Salvation 8. They must give me leave to speak a little earnestly for the interest of our Lord Jesus Christ The more I consider these inevitable Consequences of that Maxim the more I am astonished If those first Christians who had been Jews could not hear the Doctrine of the Son of God nor receive his Miracles without violating of their Duty toward the Church that had condemned them what scruples might not all that cast into all the Christians that are at this day in the World For in fine we are the Successors of that people our Fathers were not Converted but by their Ministry If then we cannot see clearly that they themselves had a right to be Converted if they laid down on the contrary a Principle which of right ought to have hindered their Conversion where then are all we as many as we are The Reasons that the Author of those Prejudices produces to make us devest our selves of our own guidance in favour of the Church that we should see with her Eyes and tread in her steps had as much place with the Jews as they have with us they could not doubt but that their Church was the Church of God none can dispute with them that eminent Authority which had so many external marks To her belonged the Adoption the
difficulty to get thither and yet that belonging of right to the examination of all men the darkness of the understanding the easiness wherewith men may deceive themselves the want of necessary helps the ignorance and simplicity of the greatest part of men would not hinder it Those are then no other than frivolous Reasons which cannot take away from men that right that God and Nature have given them They ought therefore to enjoy it at least in some respect to wit for the deciding of the question whether they ought to lose it or no. 13. But it is certain they can never so enjoy it in that regard nor decide that Question without entring upon an examination of all their Doctrines which lets us see yet more and more the absurdity of our Adversaries Principle For there is not any Principle more absurd than that which destroys it self which cannot be established but by making use of a contrary Principle and which precisely can have no place but there where it cannot be of any use But all that may be said of that Principle of those Gentlemen since it is most true that to establish it one must necessarily proceed to examine their Doctrines and that they can never know whether they ought to refer themselves to the Latin Church or examine that Doctrine by themselves till they have made that examination that is to say till there shall be no farther occasion to refer themselves to that Authority of the Latin Church which makes pleasant sport enough This is that which is evidently manifest if one consider it that before one can acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church it must be supposed that one is assured that among all the Religious Societies that are in the World the Christian is the only one in which one ought to place himself and that can never be known but by one way only which is that of examining its Doctrine and its Worship In effect there is not any one of those external marks that can make that difference The Jews had their Miracles Antiquity Succession an uninterrupted Duration the Holiness of their Patriarchs the Light of their Prophecies the Majesty of their Ceremonies we do not dispute these marks with them and as to Temporal Prosperity they had it heretofore and we are not assured that we have always had that whereof we make such boasting which nevertheless is not very great The Mahometans glory that they have the same things with the consent of the People and the admirable success of their Arms and as for Antiquity which they fail in they say that as Jesus Christ did but succeed Moses so Mahomet also has succeeded Jesus Christ As for the Heathens they had as I have said their Miracles their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies their Succession their uninterrupted Duration their Temporal Prosperities and if we strive with them about Antiquity and Multitude the advantage will not lye on our side There is then nothing more deceitful than those external appearances separated from their Doctrines they are as proper to make a Jew remain a Jew a Heathen a Heathen and a Mahometan to remain a Mahometan as to make a Christian to remain a Christian whence it follows that to form well that difference and to be assured that the Christian Communion is the only good one one ought to examine its Worship and its Doctrines Moreover before they could acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church they must suppose that a man is sure that among all the Christian Sects the Latin only is the true Church and that cannot be known but by the examination of its Doctrines Those external marks can be no ways proper for it The Greeks the Abyssines the Nestorians ascribe to themselves Antiquity Succession Miracles an uninterrupted Duration as well as the Latins They have their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies and their Multitude which is not less considerable and as to worldly Prosperity the Abyssines may boast of it and the Muscovites also who make a part of the Greek Church and who knows whether that of the Latin Church shall never change It is then manifest that they can conclude nothing from those marks separated from their Doctrine they are so ambiguous and uncertain that they cannot fix any setled Judgment upon them concerning the truth of the Latin Church But supposing that they could by those external marks or by any other ways which they would take be assured that the Latin Church was the true Church I say it must necessarily be understood in this Sence to wit that in that visible Communion God brings up and preserves his truly Faithful ones For it is in those only that that name of the visible Church is verified and not in the prophane the wicked and the worldly who are mingled with them and who are none of that Body that is the Spouse of Jesus Christ They must then be assured before they can know whether they ought to refer themselves absolutely to that Body of Pastors that governs the Latin Church that the prophane and the worldly do not prevail in that Body and that they never have prevailed for if they do prevail or if they ever have prevailed they may introduce errours into the publick Ministry and false Worship or suffer them to come in through their negligence or otherwise or scatter abroad the ill Doctrines of the Schools amongst the People favour ill customs and in a word corrupt that Communion as it appears that that did come to pass in the Jewish Church and sometimes in the Christian But how can any be fully assured that it may not be so at present otherwise then by the examining of her Doctrine They ought then to give up that point of external marks our Fathers have gained their cause without going any farther by the Prejudices of Corruption which I have set down in the second and third Chapters But if you take them only as meer conjectures and if you will reckon them to be nothing it is certain that to be assured that there is nothing corrupted in a Communion where God brings up and preserves his true Faithful people that the publick Ministry is pure in all its Doctrines and in its Worship one must of necessity take that way of examination and that examination must be very exact So that before we can enter only upon that Question whether we ought to give to the Latin Church a Soveraign Authority over our Faith and Consciences the discussing of which they know not how to avoid all must be examined from whence it follows that that Principle which I have opposed is absur'd because it destroys it self and none can ever practise it till it cannot be any more of any use and more absur'd yet in that when it would hinder us from examining it constrains us to make an examination as exact as can be thought of CHAP. IX An Examen of those Reasons they alleadge to Establish that Soveraign Authority
own thoughts of that Negative Separation But howsoever he has carried himself in his Expressions I may say if I am not mistaken without fear of any opposition that that which he has here granted us is not one of those Concessions which are sometimes given to adversaries only to cut off the Dispute but that indeed he has spoken according to his real thoughts For when in a Controversy of this nature a man distinguishes about this general Thesis That one ought to separate from a Church which binds one to profess Error in noting that it may be said in two sences the one That one ought to separate ones self Negatively in not medling with that which would wound the Conscience and the other That one ought to separate positively that is to say that one ought to set up a Society separate from that and to establish a new Ministry That he quitted the former sence in saying only that it was very ill applied to the Catholick Church restrained himself only to the latter that he would say that it was this latter kind of Separation whereof he accused us and about which we ought to justify our selves that our Consciences could not any further hinder us then from taking part in those actions which our Principles should make us look on as Criminal that if we could not without betraying our Consciences render that Honour to Saints and Relicks which they give them we ought to content our selves with not doing it When a man I say speaks as the Author of Prejudices after this manner in the heat of a dispute which he believes to be as weighty as that there is a great likelyhood that it is not a meer condescending to his adversaries but a true and lively expression of that which he finds in himself to be very Just and Reasonable Howsoever it be without informing our selves further about a thing wherein we are little concern'd we will suppose it since he will have it so as a proposition not to be disputed That our Fathers could lawfully seperate from the Church of Rome by a Negative Separation that is to say in not to taking any part in that which would wound their Consciences But that signifies in our stile that they had right to reform themselves since we call nothing else precisely Reformation but that publick Rejection which they made of divers things which they judged to be ill and contrary to Christianity Whether they did ill to go further and to proceed to a Positive Separation that is a Question apart which does not in the least hinder that their Reformation taken only as a Negative Separation might not have been done with Justice and according to that right that Conscience gives to every man But now methinks this point being so well clear'd clears a multitude of others and we may by that concession of the Author of Prejudices very well decide some Questions In the first place They ought no further to set before us that absolute obedience to the Orders and decisions of the Church of Rome in the matters of Faith and Worship to which they would hitherto have all the Faithful indispensably obliged For if those whose Consciences shall tell them that That Church binds them to believe Errors and to practise a false worship may refuse to profess to believe those Errors and to performe that Worship who sees not that that absolute obedience is overthrown Since it will depend on the dictates of the Conscience of every one and that the Conscience of each one will give it its bounds and suspend it in respect of some certain things and actions 2. The Church of Rome can no more treat those as Disobedient and Rebellions who through the dictates of their Consciences refuse to profess to believe that which she decides and to practise that which she ordains nor persecute them as such and whatsoever she should make them suffer upon that pretence of Rebellion and Disobedience would be but an unjust persecution of which she will be bound to give an account to God and men 3. They cannot also any farther demand of us what Call our Fathers had to reform themselves that is to say to reject their Superstitions and the Errors which were to be found in the Church of Rome in their days for they needed nothing else but the motions of their Consciences to give them a Right to refuse to profess them 4. They ought also to acknowledge that the Authority of the Church how great soever it may be is it yet far less then that of the Conscience since it is not only limited but surmounted and that whensoeveer they should be in oppositian a man would have right to leave the Authority of the Church and to follow his Conscience 5. And since even an erronious Conscienes such as the Author of the Prejudices supposes ours and that of our Fathers to be could suspend Acts commanded by the Church it follows necessarily from thence that to reconcile the Church and the Conscience when they should be set in opposition we must come to the Foundation and discuss the things themselves for there is no other way to free the Conscience from Errors And how much more are we obliged to do it when the Church abuses her Authority in teaching those things which are really false or in commanding those actions which are indeed unjust and criminal All then depends on the discussion of those matters by themselves But they will say your Fathers ought to have been contented to have made use of their rights each one in particular they could have kept themselves from making any profession of believing those pretended Errors and not have taken any part in those actions which they disapproved and yet nevertheless have kept silence Wherefore did they disturb the publick peace by their Tumults Why did they divulge by their out-cries the Judgment which they made of the Tenets and Customs of their Church Did they not in that sin against that respect which they owed to their Prelats and that Charity which they owed to their Brethren To answer to this Objection I say That the keeping silence is not always equally just it has its bounds and its measures according to the weight of the things that are treated of and to the Circumstances of Times and Persons If the business had been only about some meer Questions of the School upon points of Speculation or about some unprofitable Ceremonies or some bad order in the Government or even about some popular Superstitions which should not have proceeded so far as to corrupt the saving Efficacy of the Gospel I confess our Fathers had been more obliged to have kept silence then to have encountred their Prelats and raised those troubles through the diversity of their Opinions The Love of Peace respect for Order Christian Charity bidds us to bear things of that nature well which we do not so well approve of our selves and even there to follow the
of Faith from whom the Holy Scripture it self heretofore and now derives all its force he is a Heretick and many other Propositions of that nature Upon that Luther writes that All those things were maintained only out of a hatred of a General Council and to hinder any one from being heard who should give any succour to the afflicted Church That the Popes Creatures seeing well that they could not hinder a Council began to seek out ways to elude it by saying that the Pope was above a Council and that without his Authority none could either be called or held in a word that a Council had not any Power but that the Pope alone was the Infallible Rule of Truth That it seemed to him then that if the Fury of those men took place there would not further remain any other Remedy but this That the Emperour the Kings and Princes should make use of their Arms against those publick Posts and that those matters should not be decided by Words but by the Sword In the close of which he adjoyns those words which the Author of the Prejudices has related So that his meaning is not to Animate his Followers to Blood and Slaughter as the Author of the Prejudices interprets it but only to draw an absur'd consequence from his Adversaries Hypothesis which is That if he would also take away the only Remedy that was left to provide against the desolations of the Church in assembling a Free Council he would set the Emperour the Kings and Princes in Arms against the Popes and the Cardinals and all the Court of Rome and would reduce things to the utmost extremity I my self will not say that there may not be somewhat too violent in those kind of expressions but after all his design is not to animate his Followers to Blood and Slaughter but only to let Sylvester see the necessity of a Council that might judge above the Pope from that inconvenience that otherwise there would remain no other course to the Emperour to Kings and Princes to re-establish Order in the Church then to make use of their compelling power And that further appears to be the Sence because he adds immediately after That the Authority of the Bishop of Rome whether it were of Divine Right or whether it were of Human could not be urged but by the Precept Honour thy Father and thy Mother which in granting him to be a Father puts him under the first Table so that if he should do any thing in opposition to them he might be admonished and even accused by the least of the Faithful Which let us see that his meaning was no other than that which I have represented I confess it were to be wished that Luther had observed more of the mean than he did in his manner of writing and that with that great and invincible Courage joyned with that ardent zeal for the Truth and with that unshaken Constancy that he always shewed there might have been discernable more of stayedness and moderation But those faults which most frequently proceed from Temperament do not take away mens esteem of such when besides them they may see a good foundation of Piety in them and Vertues Heroical throughout as they may discern-to have shone in Luther For they cannot cease extolling the zeal of Lucifer Bishop of Cagliari nor admiring the eminent qualities of Saint Jerom although they do acknowledge too much sharpness and passion in their Style And it may be that there was even some particular necessity in the time of the Reformation to use vehemency of expression the more easily to rouse men out of that profound sleep wherein they had lain for so long a time However it be I had rather come to agree that Luther ought to have been more moderate in his expressions and if the Authour of the Prejudices would be coutented with complaining of the sharpness of his Style he should be also contented for every answer to be entreated that hereafter he will not himself any more imitate that which he condemns in another especially in writing against those who having lived in the last Age cannot have given him any personal occasion to be carried away against them with passion after the manner that he has been in many places of his Book If in the Judgment that he passes on them he would not hearken to Charity he ought at least to hearken to Justice and not to have charged them with foul Accusations under the pretences of having mistaken and misunderstood I place in this Rank that which he furthers forms against Luther in these words There never was any one says he but Luther who durst to boast in his Printed Works that he had had a long conference with the Devil that he had been convinced by his reasons that private Masses were an abuse and that that was the motive that had carried him out to abolish them But common Sence adds he has always made all others conclude not only that he was in an excess of extravagance to take the Devil for a Master of Truth and to give himself up to be his Disciple but that all those who had any marks that they were his Ministers and his Instruments and who had not any lawful Authority in the Church to make themselves be heard did not deserve that any should apply themselves to them or that they should so much as examine their Opinions Behold here Luther a Disciple a Minister and Instrument of the Devil if one will believe the Author of the Prejudices To refute that Calumny we need but to represent in a few words what that business was that he there speaks of Luther following the Style of the Monks of those days who were wont by a Figure of Rhetorick to fill their Books with their exploits against the Devil relates that being one time awakened in the midst of a dark night the Devil began to accuse him for having made the people of God Idolatrize and to have been guilty of Idolatry himself for the space of fifteen years wherein he had said private Masses and that the Reason of that Accusation was that he could not have any thing consecrated in those private Masses from whence it followed that he had adored and had made others adore meer Bread and meer Wine and not the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ He adds that that accusation struck him at his heart and that to defend himself he alledged that he was a Priest that he had done nothing but by the Order of his Superiors and that he had always pronounced the words of Consecration very exactly with the best intention in the World from whence he concluded that he could see no reason to have the Crime of Idolatry laid to his Charge That notwithstanding the Tempter did not fail to reply that those excuses would nothing avail him in that the Turks and the Priests of Baal obeyed also the Order of their Superiours with a very good
lightly to believe the Calumnies wherewith they have laboured to darken our first Reformers and to cease to give himself over to a passionate Spirit that suggests those odious accusations against persons whose lives have appeared pure and intire to a great people who having known and followed them can give a better Testimony of their Conduct then their interested Enemies do Let him Remember what Monsieur Arnaud has wrote to justify some of the Religious of our time whom he accuses to have been Uncommunicants Asacramentarians and foolish Virgins who in all matters affected an Extravagant and Schismatical Singularity That there was a Time in the life of Saint Teresia her self who was the Ornament of these last Times wherein she was decried not only concerning the Faith but concerning manners also That moreover divers have thought her possessed with a Devil and would have her Conjure That after that and toward the end of her life she was Treated as one possessed with a Devil as a Hypocrite and Dissembler and one that had lost all Honour They publickly defamed her in the Pulpits in the Churches and they compared her with one Magdalen de la Craix a Woman filled with a lying Spirit and Famous throughout all Spain for her Forgeries and her Communication with the Devil That they witnessed against her and her Religious things of so foul a nature that they were accused in the Sacred Office and charged with having committed a Thousand Forgeries That the Inquisition was forced to inform against her and her Nuns and that they expected every day when they should be made Prisoners That her Books were seized by the same Inquisition to be censured That her General markt out one of her Monasteries to be a Prison for her That the Popes Nuntio Treated her as a turbulent Woman and a common Whore That he thought to have overturned from top to bottom a new Edifice of the Dechaussez That he used them with the greatest rigour banishing some imprisoning others and generally condemning them as if they had been a People of a new Sect infected with Errors or such an ill life as it was necessary to cut off that course that they might not infect and destroy the whole World This is well nigh the Treatment that they give the first Reformers they have laboured to cover them with reproaches to weaken the efficacy of their Preaching and those very persons themselves that so loudly complain that we load them with Calumnies by so unjust a proceeding are now a days the first that make use of it themselves against us CHAP. VI. A Further Justification of the first Reformers against the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices contained in his Tenth and Eleventh Chapters AS the Book of the Prejudices is nothing else but a confused heap of Objections and unjust Accusations that the Author of that Book has piled up one upon another without Connexion and without Order So I find my self constrained that I may not break off the Connexion of my Subject to break off that of his Chapters Therefore after having answered his third where his Invectives begin against the manners and conduct of the first Reformers I shall dismiss the Examination of his 4th 5th and 6th Chapters where he Treats about the Call of the Ministers of our Communion to my Fourth Part and where he Treats of the Right that we have to a Gospel Ministry and that which he afterwards says in the 7th 8th and 9th Chapters concerning our pretended Schism to my Third Part wherein we shall Treat of our Separation from the Church of Rome and I shall now pass on to the Examination of his 10th 11th 12th and 13th wherein he renews the same personal Invectives against the first Reformers But as those Chapters are composed of almost nothing else but frivolous matters swelled up with Declamatory Exaggerations by Injuries and Passion We shall not think it unfit if setting aside all that in them which is to no purpose or too passionate we set down in a few Words all that that is more Essential in those Objections and that we Answer them also in a few Words 1. Objection is That Andrew Carolostadius Arch-Deacon of Wittenburg whom Melanchton runs down as a brutish Fellow without wit and without Learning who embraced the Fanatical Doctrine of the Anabaptists was the first who had the boldness to assault the Doctrine of the Real presence and to that effect he invented an Extravagant Explication of those words This is my Body saying that by the word This Jesus Christ did not mean that which he held in his hand but that he pointed to his own true Body Answer It is not True that Carolostadius was the first that opposed the Doctrine of the Real presence Bertram Erigenes Rabanus opposed it in the ninth Century when Paschasius spread it abroad Berengarius opposed it in the Eleventh and in the Age of the Reformation it self the Bohemians called Taborites and those of the Valleys of Piemont and Province called Waldenses openly rejected it So that although all they have said of Carolostadius were true yet we have not any particular interest in him and we shall say in respect of him that which Saint Augustine said in respect of Caecilianus Caecilianus is not my Father for Jesus Christ has said call no man Father upon Earth for one is your Father even God but I call Caecelianus my Brother my good Brother if he be a good man but my bad Brother if he be not good Notwithstanding I know not whether that pretended Anabaptism of Carolostadius is not an ill-grounded Accusation into which Mclancthon and Luther himself who did not love Carolostadius might have been surprized as it frequently happens among persons divided in their Opinions at least it is certain that Carolostadius defended himself by publick Writings and that he protested that he was innocent And as to that Explication that he gave of the word This in the words of Jesus Christ it is an Error from the Truth and a false gloss on the Signification of that Word but it is an Error notwithstanding that does not hinder that the ground of his sentiment concerning the Eucharist should not be true and right and how many different interpretations are there of the same word upon which they refute one another amongst the Doctors of the Church of Rome and who almost all say things very remote from common sence 2. Object Zuinglius had already began his Reformation before ever he spoke a word of the Real Presence and Adoration of the Host although he notes in his Works that from that very Time he was perswaded in his heart that Jesus Christ was not really present in the Eucharist But as it is very hard to believe that during all that Time he never said Mass that he never assisted at it and that he never administred the Sacrament that he should not all the while be discovered by those who
her by her common Practice which being open to the Eyes of all the World discovers much more clearly the true Sentiments of that Church when the decisions of the Councils do not and the Act of which the people scarce know any 2. Because the Council of Trent it self and the Act of the Profession of the Faith obliging as they do those who submit themselves to it to receive in general unwritten Traditions and those things which the Church of Rome Observes they engage them by consequence to receive and practise all that which is commonly observed and practised in that Church under a pretence of Tradition and observance although it should not be formally contained either in the decisions of Councils or in that Profession of Faith So that the Conscience of a man who is in that Communion binds him to believe and do all that others believe and do 16. Objection The Third kind of Calumny is not less ordinary in their Ministers nor less unjust in it self It consists in running down as blameable Errors certain Articles of the belief of the Church which not only were no Errors but about which they have been at last constrained to acknowledge that the difference between them and the Church consists more in words then in the thing it self whether they themselves have forsook their first thoughts to take up those of the Catholicks or whether by a blind rashness they had openly condemned them without understanding them To prove this Corruption the Author of the Prejudices lays down the point of Justification which he says the first Reformers took for the chief ground of their Separation and yet nevertheless he adds one of their Professors of Sedan named Ludovicus le Blanc who has made some Theses of Justification after having examined the Doctrine of the Catholicks and that of the Protestants and their principal differences about that matter concludes upon all the Articles that that of the Catholicks is good and that the Protestants are only contrary to them in name Answ I acknowledge that in this Controversy the Church of Rome takes the word Justification in one sence and that we take it in another and I do not deny but that has sometimes produced in that dispute ambiguities and differences or Words This is also that which M. le Blanc had a design to clear in his Theses of Justification which the Author of the Prejudices has abused But besides that in that very thing we have two advantages over the Church of Rome the one that we speak as the Scripture has done and that we take the words after the manner that Jesus Christ that Saint Paul and Saint James have taken them when they have Treated about this Doctrine whereas the Church of Rome gives them another sence and the other that in so taking the words in their true Signification that Idea that we give of Justification is distinct and clear where that of the Church of Rome is embroiled and confused Besides that I say it is certain that we have but too real differences upon that point which no ways consists in words but in the very things themselves and which make very weighty Controversies To Manifest this Truth we need but to cast our Eyes upon the four chief Doctrines that form the Idea of our Justification according as the Scripture has given it us The First is That it is an Act of the Soveraign mercy of God that pardons our sins and which by Vertue of the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ discharges us from the punishment we have deserved by them The Second is That God out of that same mercy in pardoning our sins adopts us for his Children and gives us a right to his Eternal Inheritance by the merit of Jesus Christ his Son The Third That we apply to our selves the satisfaction and merit of Jesus Christ by a lively Faith accompanied with a sincere Repentance and a Holy Recourse to the Divine Mercy and that it is this Faith that puts us into the Communion of our Redeemer And the Fourth That God in pardoning and adopting us imposes this Condition upon us that for the time to come we live Holily according to the Laws which he has given us and that this very thing is a necessary Consequence of that Communion which we have with Jesus Christ as well as of our Faith our Repentance and our Recourse to the Divine mercy There is not any one of these parts of our Justification upon which we have nor very considerable differences with the Church of Rome For in the First we differ 1. Concerning him who Pardons us The Church of Rome would have it not only that it should be God in the Quality of a Soveraign Judge but men also that is to say Priests and Bishops in Quality of inferiour and Subordinate Judges and that their Absolution is a Judiciary Act for so the Council of Trent has defined it to be But we believe that there is none besides God who can pardon our sins under the Quality of a Soveraign Judge and that the Pardon which we receive from the Mouth of his Ministers is a Ministerial Pardon which consists in a Declaration that they make to us of Gods Pardon as the Interpreters of his will revealed in the Gospel 2. We differ about the extent of that Pardon The Church of Rome would have it that God in pardoning the Sin retains the Punishment that is to say that he acquits us from eternal Punishment but that reserves to himself the inflicting of Temporal Punishments and we on the contrary hold that he remits all sorts of Temporal and Eternal punishments and that the Afflictions which he sends us are not the Punishments of his Justice but the Corrections and Chastisements of his Fatherly Discipline 3. From whence there arises a Third difference which consists in this that the Church of Rome believes that those Temporal Punishments wherewith God visits us are true Satisfactions to his Justice for our sins which we deny 4. There arises from thence yet another difference concerning that which they call those penal works which every one imposes upon himself or which their Confessors impose on their Penitents for they would that these should be also satisfactions to the Justice of God which we do not believe 5. The Church of Rome would have it that those satisfactory Punishments should go beyond this Life and it is partly upon this that they ground their Doctrine of Purgatory which we reject 6. It is also upon that very thing that the Indulgences of the Church of Rome are grounded which cannot be taken for meer Relaxations of Canonical Punishments since they extend most frequently very far beyond the life of man and sometimes even unto five and twenty and Thirty thousand Years 7. We may say also that it is a difference which we have with them by which we understand that first Act of the mercy of God that Pardons our sins which comes from the
the Reformation that he has established and which serves as a Foundation to that of the Calvinists In fine he explains himself in the 321 Page where he says That our behaviour in respect of the Lutherans is enough to give a ground to conclude that the Heads of the party of the Calvinists have been such as have guided themselves more by Policy then Conscience which being adds he most contrary to the Spirit of God and remote from that which ought to be found in those new Prophets which he would extraordinarily raise up for the reforming of his Church it is not possible for us to take them for men of that kind and we have a most just ground to refuse to hearken to them It results from thence that the Author of the Prejudices had a design to conclude 1. That they ought to reject us without Examining any thing that we say and without so much as hearing us 2. That we are a sort of men without any Conscience who have no Idea of Christian Vertue nor of the Spirit of Christianity and who guide our selves by Worldly Policy 3. That we overthrow the Reformation of Luther which serves nevertheless for the Foundation of our own 4. That our First Reformers had none of their Mission from God and that they were not the Instruments which he made choice of to Reform the Errors of the Church of Rome To establish these propositions he heightens on one side the differences that were between Luther Zuinglius and Calvin and all that the heat of Disputation made them say on one side and on the other and in the end he sets down the esteem that we have always had of Luther notwithstanding those Divisions and the Condescension that we have for him and those of his Party in oposition to the hatred that we have always says he Testified against the Church of Rome All that unjust Reasoning is founded upon divers false Propositions that the Author of the Prejudices has supposed as evident and beyond all doubt and of which notwithstanding he has captiously suppressed one part to give the more Colour to his Invective 1. His Reasoning is founded upon ' this Proposition That we hold our First Reformers to be new Prophets or as he speaks to be the Apostles of a new Gospel But this is a false and calumnious Supposition for we hold on the contrary that our Reformers Preached nothing new they were not under the Quality either of new Prophets or Apostles of a new Gospel they did not boast that they brought a new Revelation into the World but they only opposed humane Errors that had no Foundation in the old Revelation and in that respect I have shewn that they had a more then sufficient Call in the Right that is Common to all Christians and in the Ministry which they themselves exercised in the Latin Church without any necessity that there should be any Extraordinary and immediate Mission of God for that and I have explained in what sence it must be understood that there was something of Extraordinary in their Call 2. That Reasoning supposes That we ought not to hear any Reformers 'till first we have examined the Quality of their persons and if the Quality of their persons do not satisfy us we ought to reject their words and to remain in the State we were in before But there is nothing more pernitious then this Principle to which I oppose a contrary Principle which is That we ought to judge of that which our Reformers said by the word of God and by the proper Characters of Truth or Falshood which are in the things themselves after a manner abstracted from the Judgment that we may make of those persons and that it is a way to Error to Judge by the Qualities of the persons This is that which I have made appear elsewhere and shall not omit to establish it yet further in this place for the greater clearing of this Truth I say then that when it falls out that those who Preach have personal Qualities that do not satisfy us it is indeed a Reason that Obliges us to take the greater heed to their Doctrine But those matters being at the bottom as they are true or false in themselves without the persons that propound them changing their natures they ought to be chiefly considered in themselves if we would assure our selves in a good Conscience that we are in the way of Truth for we cannot have that assurance if we Judge only by the persons since the Faith is immediatly founded upon the word of God and not upon that of men whosoever they be Moreover every one knows that a Judgment concerning persons is oftentime far harder and more subject to Error then that of the things themselves whether it be because ordinarily it depends upon a great number of particular circumstances which one cannot exactly know and which yet one ought to know before a man can be able to Judge or whether it be also because it is open to the Illusions of Hypocrisy which hides real vices under the appearances of Vertue and to those of Calumny which turns the best actions into a bad meaning that suppresses the good and heightens the bad Besides that it is certain that the Judgment which is made of persons ought partly to depend on that of things so far is it from that that what is made of things should depend on that of persons For on the one side how many Founders of Heresy have there been whose life has appeared to have been very exemplary and who were notwithstanding ravenous Wolves how many Pharisees who have boasted of their righteousness while their Doctrine was a Leaven whereof great heed was to be taken There have been some who have even gone so far as to have wrought Miracles and Jesus Christ has foretold that false Christs and false Prophets shall arise who shall work great Signs and Wonders capable of seducing the very Elect if it were possible And on the other side do not sufficiently understand the ways of Divine Providence to be able to conclude without rashness that it never makes use of persons guilty of many crimes either for the Propagation of its Truth or the Reformation of Errors Saint Paul says that God puts his Treasure into Earthen Vessels that the Excellency of his power may be of God and not of man The same Apostle Teaches us that divers in his Time Preached Jesus Christ out of a Spirit of Envy and Contention God heretofore made use of Salomon not only for the building and preservation of his Temple but also to give the Church one part of the Canon of its Scriptures which is much more then the Temple and yet notwithstanding that Prince gave himself over to the love of Women and fell into Idolatry and lastly Jesus Christ made use of a Judas at first that sold him into his Enemies Hands But to decide this Question by Examples drawn out of the
learned The one extends its use unto all that is Necessary for Instruction and the Conduct of life and the other in heaping up of general difficulties makes it unprofitable to Instruct us in the least Truths What Judgment can we make of this diversity unless this that the language of these Gentlemen changes according to the difference of Times and Interests as one has said of them elsewhere When the case is about gaining credit to their Translation of the New Testament they speak as advantagiously of the Scripture as it is possible for them to speak and when the business is to oppose a Reformation made according to the Rule of the Scripture but which notwithstanding has not the happiness of their Agreement you see what they say of that same Scripture The Scripture shall then to speak properly be only to be commended by the Intrest of their Translation and as long as that Interest shall remain shall be the Collection of the divine Teachings of our Lord The Testament that assures us of the Inheritance of our Father The mouth of Jesus Christ who although he is in Heaven speaks continually upon earth not only the nourishment of sound Souls and those who are establish'd in grace as the Body of the Son of God but even the Consolation of Sinners the light of the blind the remedy of the Sick and the life of the dead For these are the Titles that the Preface gives it but whenever that Interest shall cease those praises shall do so too and it shall be nothing but a Ridiculous way and impossible for the Instructing of men in the Truth I would therefore very fain know of these Gentlemen whether it were only upon the sight of their Translation that S. Cyprian S. Augustine and S. Gregory wrote that which the Preface relates or whether those Fathers did not consider the Scripture in it self For if it be the first they forgot to tell us that they only spake out of a Prophetick Spirit of that Translation and if it be the Second why have they entertained us with that admirable proportion of the Scripture to great and small to the strong and weak and that easy and intelligible manner wherewith it propounds to us all that is necessary for the Conduct of our life since that without the Translation of Mons it is an Infinite way which has no end a ridiculous way and Impossible to Instruct men in the Truth What can the Author of the Prejudices say to defend himself from this Manifest Contradiction which he discovers between him and his Colleague Will he say that the Scripture is in truth a good means for the Instruction of men but that it is so only with the Interpretations of the Fathers But the Author of that Preface speaks for Scripture alone separated from the Interpretation of the Fathers such as its Translation is for he excuses himself in that he had not made a collection of notes and explanations drawn out of the writings of the holy Fathers and he does not fail to say that in his Translation as plain as it is not only the Souls of the more learned but of the more simple also and unlearned may find that which will be necessary for their Instruction Will he say that he does not mean to exclude the learned from the use of the Scripture but only the more simple for the Instruction of which former he does not deny but that it would be a most proper means But besides that his Brother speaks formally of the Instruction of the more simple why has the Author of the Prejudices made it a ridiculous and Impossible way an infinite way which has no Issue a way which is of so excessive a length that one can never rationally hope to come to the end of it whatsoever diligence one should make Will he say that the Scripture ought to be joined with Tradition and that without Tradition it cannot give a perfect Instruction But the Preface says expresly that they will find in that Translation all that will be necessary for Instruction Will he say that in order to the Scriptures Instructing one the Sence of the Church ought to be added to it But the Preface says that according to Saint Augustine the Scripture lays down all that is necessary for the Conduct of our lives after a most easy and Intelligible manner and that she explains and makes clear her self Will he say that in order to the Scriptures being capable to Instruct us we ought at least to read it with Dependance upon the Church and to take it from her hand But wherefore then would these Gentlemen have the People to read their Translation since they are only private Doctors and not the Church Wherefore when the Prelats rais'd to the highest dignities have forbid the reading of it by their Ordinances have we seen Printed writings maintain on the contrary there was in those Ordinances a Threatning of the Will and Commandment of God who would that we should hear his Son and not that we should suppress his Gospel a Contradiction to the Holy Scripture which was set down in writing for no other end but to be heard and practis'd by all Nations of the world a Contradiction of all the Councils which have always taken the Scripture for the Judge of the belief of the Church and of all the Difficulties and Questions that can arise in the Doctrine of Faith or Manners a Contradiction of all the Holy Fathers who advis'd the Faithful above all things continually to read the word of God Why has one Introduc'd two Lay-men Parishoners Saint Hilary Montanus saying one to another The Bishops cannot take away from us the Gospel that Jesus Christ has given us that God spoke to all his People when he said To day if you will hear my voice harden not your Hearts a Bishop cannot take away our Eyes from us to hinder us from seeing and considering our way we should not see Jesus Christ our Saviour our Pastor and our great Bishop who goes before us in his Gospel That if a Bishop would turn us away from if an Apostle if an Angel from Heaven would stop up this way and would go about to lead and guide us in another we ought not to believe him Why has he made us see those Parishoners holding That there is nothing more contrary to the Gospel then a prohibition to read and have it that bread and nourishment is not more necessary to preserve the life of the Body then the word of God is to maintain Life in our Souls That all Christians have a natural right that cannot be taken from them of Instructing themselves by the word of God and labouring to understand it and that the Holy Scriptures were given to the whole Church and not only to the Bishops who have no right to deprive the Faithful of them That this is say they what the Divel would preach up if he were
Parishioners of Saint Hilary Montanus But on the contrary in the view of that Ignorance under which they were held For see how they speak Our Lord said I have Compassion on the Multitude for they have nothing to eat and you see the Complaint that the Prophet made The Children ask for Bread and there is none to give unto them It were a small matter if they would content themselves with the not giving them the Bread of the Gospel They will not suffer them to take it and if they take it They snatch it out of their Hands They do not Instruct them and they would hinder them so that they should not Instruct thenselves out of the word of God and that that Prophecy should not be accomplish'd Erunt omnes docibiles Deo and they shall be taught of God I thought my self bound to make these first Reflections to shew the injustice and inequality of these men that we have to do with Nihil est says Cicero quod minus ferendum sit quam rationem vitae ab altero reposcere eum quinon posset suae reddere Notwithstanding after having a little cooled that impetuous motion of the Author of the Prejudices I shall not fail to Justify our Fathers touching the Principle upon which they made their Reformation I say then in the first place That they could not in that State wherein things were take the Church in their days for the Rule of their Faith without renouncing Common sence The Church in their days or to speak better that which they would call the Church was made up of Three sorts of persons The Court of Rome the Prelats and the other Clergy and the People The Court of Rome was the source of all evil it was that that had spread abroad all the Errors and Superstitions in the Latin Church or that had at least fomented and maintained them when they took their rise elsewhere Her Usurpations and the disorder of her Government was one of the complaints of our Fathers They complained of her Principles her Maxims and some decisions of the Faith which she had caused to pass in Councils that were servilely subjected to her will and her interests She was therefore a resolute party in this affair evidently interested and by consequence uncapable of Judging It is True that she called her self the Mother and the Mistress of all Churches and that one of her pretensions was Infallibility in the Faith But that very thing was one of the Errors of which our Fathers required a correction whatever probability she had of ascribing it to her self Adrian the sixth acknowledged a great part of the disorders of that Court in his instructions to his Nuntio whom he sent to the Diet of Nuremberg as we have already seen and the General voice of the whole Church which demanded a long time ago a Reformation in capite membris make it known enough to leave us out of all doubt Moreover the Court of Rome did so loudly and vehemently declare her self against a Reformation that it could not be any further hoped for and why should our Fathers have taken her for the Rule of Faith since not only the Gallican Church who lived in Communion with her maintained that she was not but even the Experience of many years had very evidently shewed that she could not be Does not Tertullian turned Montanist Testify That Eleutherius Bishop of Rome had received the Prophecies of Montanus of Priscilla and Maximilla and that he had already wrote Letters of Communion to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia which were Montanists and that those Letters should have their effect although Praxeas had not made them to be recalled in relating false things concerning those Churches and their Prophets And has not the sixth General Council condemned Pope Honorius as a Monothelite Heretick with Sergius Patriaerch of Constantinople and some others I know that some have said that that Council was deceived in the business of Honorius but without entring upon that Question in which it is certain that they deceive themselves as not long since P. Louis Thomassin Priest of the Oratory in his Dissertation about that sixth Council has acknowledged It is enough that that Council condemned Honorius for an Heretick and that it proscribed his name and his Memory For that Condemnation after what manner soever it hapned is an Authentick Declaration that a General Council has held that Popes may Err and by eonsequence that they are not the Rule of Faith And it is nothing to the purpose to say as P. Thomassin has done that Henorius Erred only in the quality of a private man and not as Pope or to speak more properly That he did not Err but only that he had a mind to make use of a Dispensation for the procuring the peace of the Church which was divided about the Question whether there were two wills and two operations in Jesus Christ or whether there was but one and that he desired that they would be silent about that point Which side soever they chuse it will always follow from that Example of Honorius that the Bishops of Rome are not the Rule of Faith For to make a Rule of Faith it is not enough to be exempt from Error either in quality of Popes or even in the quality of private men it is further necessary that they should be always in a state of not fomenting or entertaining Heresy but of opposing it on the contrary of condemning it when it has made any progress and of maintaining the True Faith But this is that which they cannot say of Honorius in respect of the Heresy of the Monothelites That Heresy had over-ran all the East the Patriarchates of the East were infected with it the Emperour Heraclius had established it by a publick Edict a Council it self held at Constantinople had confirmed it whether therefore they say that Honorius embraced Heresy in quality of a private man or whether they say that by a false Dispensation he would only have imposed silence on the Orthodox which way soever they take it is manifest that he was not in a state under the quality of Pope to put a stop to the course of Heresy nor to succour the true Faith For what likelyhood is there that as Pope he should have condemned himself as a private man or that in quality of Pope or as they speak ex cathedra he should have Published the Truth that ought to be held while his own private opinion was that he should hold his peace about it and suppress it It is therefore a Mockery to make a Rule of Faith of such a Pope who through his own private Heresy or his imprudent Dispensation could not hinder Monothelism from Triumphing And it cannot be a less one if they should pretend that the Church of Rome should be the True Rule of Faith while such Popes are her Head since she can do nothing without them and since they might
how to Read What will become of those who have no understanding nor any readiness of mind How can all those People examine all those Points the Discussion of the least of which notwithstanding is evidently necessary to make them rationally determine It is easy to see that all that heap of Objections and Difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has proposed against the way of the Scripture tends only to lead men to the Authority of the Church of Rome to the end they should subject themselves to that as a Soveraign and Infallible Rule But as the Doctrine of the Soveraign Authority of that Church is not one of those first Principles which the light of Nature dictates to all men since of Thirty parts of our known World there are at least nine and twenty who do not acknowledge it and as they cannot also say that it is one of the first and common notions of Christianity since of all those who profess themselves to be Christians there are Three parts which reject it The Author may freely give us leave if he pleases that we should first demand of him upon what Foundation he would build that Doctrine to make us receive it as a point of Divine Faith I say of Divine Faith for if we should hold it only as a matter of human Faith he himself would see well that we could not believe the things which the Church of Rome should teach in vertue of its Authority otherwise then with a humane Faith since the things which depend upon a principle cannot make an impression in us different from that which the principle has made To the end therefore that I should believe with a Divine Faith that which the Church of Rome shall teach me by its Authority it is necessary that I should also believe its Authority with a Divine Faith Thus far methinks we should not have any Controversy Let us see therefore upon what Foundations of Divine Faith he would pretend to establish this Proposition The Authority of the Church of Rome is Soveraign and Infallible He can only do it by these Three ways The first is by a new Revelation that God should have made to us of this Truth the Second in shewing that it is one of the Articles that is contained in the Revelation of the Apostles and the Third in shewing us the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility impressed upon the Church of Rome even after the same manner as every thing proves it self by the marks that distinguish it and thus it is that we pretend that the Scripture forces the acknowledgment of its own Divinity The first of these ways is nullified since they agree with us that since Jesus Christ and his Apostles there has been no new Revelation and that there must not be any expected The second would be proper and necessarily supposes a recourse either to Tradition or the Scripture for there are but these two Channels in which we can seek for the Revelation of the Apostles But that of the Scripture is forbidden us by the Author of the Prejudices by reason of the unconquerable difficulties which he discovers there It is says he a way full of obstacles and difficulties and even those who profess to spend all their days in the Study of Divinity ought to judge that Examination to be above all their abilities He must therefore content himself with the way of Tradition But before he can make use of that he must be first assured and that with a certainty of Divine Faith that that which that Tradition contains is come down from the Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles or at least that this particular point of the Authority of the Roman Church in the state wherein it is at present must have proceeded from thence that the Apostles must have Transmitted it viva voce down to their Successours and that their Successours must have received it and Transmitted it down to those who descended from them in the same sence and every whit the same as the Apostles had given it to them If he cannot be assured of that Transmission all that he would build upon it will be uncertain and if he cannot be assured of it with a Divine Faith that which he would build upon it will not be more so But how can he be assur'd of that He has no more that living Voice of the Apostles to represent it to us he must rely upon Testimonyes would it therefore be the Roman Church that must assure us But her Divine and Infallible Authority is as yet in Question and while it shall be questioned it remains suspended it cannot be believed any further then with a humane Faith Shall it be the Scripture that must give Testimony to that Tradition But there are so many Difficulties in that way says the Author of the Prejudices That it is Evident that it is not that which God has chosen to Instruct us in his Truths Must we learn it from that Tradition it self But to decide that point whether that Tradition came from the Apostles or no Tradition it self can be yet no other than a humane Testimony I mean that the Successors of the Apostles declare to us that they have received such and such Doctrines from the Apostles viva voce and that they have receiv'd them in the same sence in which the Apostles gave them to them we cannot at the most have more then a humane Faith for them for they are men as well as others Hitherto therefore there cannot be had a Divine Faith concerning the point of the Sovereign and Infallible Authority of the Roman Church and nothing by Consequence that can assure the Conscience and set the mind of man at rest Let us therefore pass over to the third means which is that of examining the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility that may be seen in the Roman Church It is in my Judgment in the sight of this that they give us certain external Marks and we have already seen that the Author of the Prejudices establishes upon this that Authority about which we dispute The most eminent Authority says he that can be in the world is easily discover'd to be in the Catholick Church because though there are Sects that dispute with it the Truth of its Tenets yet there are none that can with any Colour contend with it for that eminence of Authority which arises from its External Marks But without entring here far into the Controversy touching those Marks I say that he is very far from being able to establish such a certainty upon them as we ought to have of a Principle of Religion And this will appear from these three Reasons The First is That the greatest part of those marks are common to false Societies and even to Schismatical Churches which not only are not Infallible but which are actually in Errour as I have shewn in the first part of this Treatise The Greek Church for example in
all that it is necessary that every one should mistrust his own Eyes and the defects of his memory and that he should be always recollecting his first thoughts to keep himself from passing a wrong Judgment In fine we will also demand of the Author of the Prejudices whether he would not give the Scripture this Honour to reckon it for one part of Tradition since it contains the first Sermons of the Apostles from whence we may draw a great deal of light for the deciding of the Question upon which we are which is that of the Authority and Infallibility of the Church of Rome For how can any man rationally determine himself upon a point of that weight without consulting the first and the most Antient piece of Tradition But that being so we see here how we are fallen back into the difficulties and perplexities which the Author of the Prejudices pretends to be unconquerable And as those Gentlemen are liable enough to be beaten with their own Weapons we will only turn against him the conclusions that he pretends to draw against us from his Principles and demand of him Whether he believes this way very proper for those who are Obliged to spend the greatest part of their time in other Employments Whether he believes it proper for Judges Magistrats Tradesmen Labourers Souldiers Women Children for those who do not understand any of the Languages into which the Fathers are Translated for the Blind who cannot Read and for those who have no quickness of understanding If I only propounded to my self to refute this Author I might content my self with what I have said and wait with patience for what he should have to propose to disintangle his Catechumeni from the Difficulties and lengths whereinto he himself has plunged them But because I desire also to satisfy mens Con Consciences I think my self bound to Answer directly to his Objections Let us therefore see those four Maxims which he says our Principle includes and without which he is certain it cannot subsist As to the first we shall tell him that it does not belong to us to lay down the proofs of this Proposition That the Church of Rome for this is that we are about is not infallible in her decisions concerning the Faith she is naturally subject to be deceived if she pretends to have a priviledge that exempts her from a weakness common to all men it belongs to her to shew it and to convince the world of it but till then we shall always have a ground to presume that she is subject to that general Law and that is sufficient without any other proof to hinder us from acknowledging her for the Rule of Faith As to the Second which is That Traditions do not make up any part of the Rule of Faith we shall tell him That it is not necessarily incumbent on us to bring a passage of Scripture to exclude Traditions that Common sence is enough for that because it dictates to all men even to the most simple if they would take heed that after sixteen hundred years or thereabouts which are gone since the Apostles days Tradition cannot but be a very confused and uncertain thing and that being so vagous as it is after its having passed through the hands of an infinite number of men naturally unsetled and changeable it is not imaginable that they should not have altered increased lessened it since that happens through a long tract of Time to all other things and by consequence that it could not at present but be out of a condition to serve for a Rule of Faith Thus far the most simple are within the limits of nature and general Experience If they pretend that Tradition ought to be exempted it does not belong to us to shew that it is not it is their part who make that pretension to produce their Reasons and yet for all that it must be presumed on the side of Nature and general Experience It appears therefore already that the Two First Propositions which our Hypothesis includes according to the Author of the Prejudices to wit That the Church of Rome is not Infallible in its decisions concerning the Faith and that Traditions do not make up any part of the Rule of Faith do not give us the least difficulty but they give an infinite one to our adversaries For they ought solidly to prove the contrary Propositions not only to the Learnned and knowing persons but to the most simple also to Tradesmen to Labourers to Souldiers to Women and generally to all or otherwise they abuse their credulity retaining them without Reason and without Justice in their Communion in which they cannot remain with a good Conscience unless they are assured of the Truth of these two Articles That the Church of Rome is Infallible in her decisions of Faith and that Traditions make up a part of the Rule of Faith But how can those people have that certainty As for what respects the Third Proposition to wit That the Scripture contains all the points of the Faith generally it has no more need then the others to be proved by passages of Scripture It is sufficient to establish it to see that we cannot be assured of the Faith either by the decisions of the Church or Tradition For that thing it self necessarily leads all Christians to the Scripture alone there being nothing besides the decisions of the Church and Tradition that can Dispute a part with it There remains therefore only the Fourth Proposition which is That the Scriptures generally contain all the points of Faith after a manner fitted to the understandings of all the World But this proposition so framed is not ours neither is it included in our Hypothesis We only say that that which the Scripture contains in a manner fitted to the understanding of all the World concerning the Faith and Manners is sufficient for Salvation provided that moreover they have not Errors that hinder that effect But there is no need of proving this proposition by Texts of Scripture It sufficiently proves it self as well by the very nature of the things that the Scripture clearly Teaches as by the light of common sence and the first notions of the Conscience For those first notions dictate to all Christians that although God be free in the dispensation of his Call he is notwithstanding in good earnest towards all those to whom his Call is addressed and that there being among those the weak as well as the strong the simple as well as the Learned it must necessarily be concluded that he would render his Salvation inaccessible or impossible to the simpler sort provided that they seriously applyed themselves to it according to their Call The Author of the Prejudices himself acknowledges this Principle and he calls it a principle of common sence He draws ill consequences from it but the True Consequence that must be drawn is Those things which the Scripture clearly Teaches and after a manner
fitted to all the World are sufficient to Salvation The Author of the Prejudices may chuse therefore whensoever it shall please him other Propositions to exaggerate the pretended difficulties of the Scripture But what choice soever he should make and what side soever he should take it is certain that those unconquerable difficulties which according to him render the way of the Scripture ridiculous and impossible to the simpler sort are nothing else but the Visions and Dreams of Fancy which admits or would create changes and that he can say nothing more vain and chimerical then that which he has displayed in the 14th and 15th Chapters This is what will manifestly appear if we consider that the Scripture is the Rule of Faith two ways for it is so either to form the Faith to a degree of perfection and compleatness as much as a Man is capable of it in this Life or to form it to a degree of meer sufficiency for Salvation In the former respect it is the Rule of Faith not only for the things which it clearly contains but generally for all that which it contains whether in express Terms or in equivalent whether by near consequences or remote in a word after what manner soever it be In the Second it is the Rule of Faith meerly for the things that are Essential to Religion which it clearly contains and after a manner fitted to the understanding of all the World To make a Just and Right use in the former respect I confess that we must necessarily go over a great many Obstacles and conquer a great many difficulties We must weigh the words exactly examine the Stile consider the Reasons compare it with like expressions consider the passages that seem contrary to it penetrate into the true sence of ambiguous and obscure places look to the connexions of the Discourse to the matter treated of and to the end and design of him who speaks To this effect it is necessary to know how to distinguish the Apocryphal Books from the Canonical to understand the Original Tongues to Judge of the Translations by and even to consult Interpreters All that requires without doubt a great deal of care earnest application a great deal of study and it is very true that to acquit ones self well of it the whole life of a man is not too long I shall even say that it is too short and that humane abilities are too weak to exhaust the Scripture which is an infinite depth of Mysteries and Heavenly Truths and therefore it is that the Author of the Preface to the New Testament of Mons has very well said that we may always lose our selves in the abysses of Learning and Wisdom which we adore without being able to comprehend Notwithstanding it is our duty to advance in that knowledge as far as we can and it would be but a very bad reason for dispensation in that Case to alledge the lengths and difficulties of it for however we cannot attain to an intire perfection yet we may notwithstanding make a considerable progress and the more a man advances in that study the more Joy and Comfort he has But as to the Second way in which the Scripture is the Rule of the Faith to wit to form the Faith in a degree of meer sufficiency for Salvation through the Essential things which it clearly contains in this regard I say its use is freed from all those lengths and all those difficulties and accomodated to the capacity of the meanest requiring nothing else but good sence and a good Conscience which God gives to the smallest of his Children First There is no necessity for that that a man should study the Question of the Apocryphal and Canonical Books for that discussion which is necessary when they would penetrate into the abstruse things of the Scripture which may be drawn from it by 〈◊〉 consequences or by a narrow Examination of its terms and the structure of the discourse because those particular things do not carry so sensible a Character of their Divinity with them as the rest That Discussion I say which is necessary in that Case is not so when they restrain themselves as the simpler sort do to the essential things which the Scripture clearly Teaches because those things make themselves sensibly to be owned to be Divine and by consequence Canonical which is sufficient for the certainty of their Faith if they remain in that Degree Secondly They have no need either to consult the Original Tongues or the different ways of Reading because that those exact Observations which are necessary when we would make use of the Scripture in the first Degree are not so when they would in the Second Imperfect Translations sufficiently contain those clear things that make up the Essence of Religion and the different ways of Reading do not make any difference Those things are neither in one only passage nor in one only Book they are so abundantly spread over the whole body of the Scripture that the faults of Translators or varieties of Manuscripts cannot hinder us from finding them there And if sometimes it happens that the boldness and unfaithfulness of a Translator should go so far as on set purpose to falsify any place of Scripture as Veron has done not long since in reference to a passage in the Acts which says that the Apostles served the Lord and which Veron has Translated that they said Mass in the Lord or as the Authors of the Translation of Mons have done who have inserted into that same passage that the Apostles Sacrificed to the Lord and another in the Epistle to Philemon wherein Saint Paul says that he trusted to be given to the faithful through their Prayers where they have Translated it that he trusted he should be given to them through the merit of their Prayers when that I say should fall out there would be found enough persons in the Church who would not fail to advertise the people of such unfaithfulness that they might take heed of them Lastly I say That it is not necessary that the simpler sort should consult the interpreters of the Scripture to assure themselves of its true meaning for the Objects of their Faith are so clearly explained there they are laid down in so many places they are so well connected with one another they are there in such a manner that provides so well for all that is necessary for the instruction of the mind for the consolation of the conscience and the Sanctification of the Soul that with the Grace of God which accompanies them in his Elect they have no need of any thing but their meer view to insinuate and enter into their hearts and to form therein a True Faith To dissipate in a few words all that the Authour of the Prejudices has set down in his 14th and 15th Chapters I shall only tell him that he can require but these four conditions in the Objects of Faith to render them
gone so far as to have caused a rupture of Communion So that it is not for these kinds of things that our Fathers left the Church of Rome they had more sufficient more urgent and indispensable reasons in the other controversies among which that of Justification by Meritorious Works and by Indulgences Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Mass Invocation of Saints and Angels religious worshipping of Images Humane Satisfactions the Lordship of the Pope and his Clergy over mens Consciences held the chiefest place These are the true Points which caused a Separation and if the others contributed any thing to it it was only by the connexion which they had with these here or because they noted a general Spirit of Superstition contrary to true Piety or in fine by reason of their number for sometimes divers both less dangerous each to a part all together make a mortal and incurable disease However it be it appears that our Fathers had besides but too just and necessary reasons of their Separation But to come to set out this matter in its full evidence it will be requisite to see what they can say in opposition to what I have said It seems to me that they can take but one of these Three sides 1. Either to deny that the Transubstantiation Adoration of the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Mass c. which we call Errors are so in effect Or 2. To say That even when they should suppose that they were Errors they would not nevertheless take away from the Church of Rome the quality of a true Church Neither would they be incompatible with salvation and by consequence they could not be a sufficient cause of Separation 3. Or in fine to maintain that even when these Points should be a sufficient cause of Separation they could not be so at least in regard of our Fathers because our Fathers were by right subject to their ordinary Pastors dependent upon their Hierarchical Government and chiefly upon that of the Church of Rome which they pretend is the Mother and Mistress of all others and the Center of Christian Unity from whence it follows that they could never separate themselves but that on the contrary they were bound to receive all the conditions it required to be in its Communion These are the only Three things in my judgement which they can propose with any colour I will examine the last in the following Chapter let us here consider these two others The First necessarily engages the man who will make use of it to enter into an Examination of the foundation of those matters or which comes to the same things solidly to establish the Infallibility of the Church of Rome and of that Party that adheres to it which is a general Controversie that includes all the others as I have shewn in the First Part of this Work And by consequence he must renounce all that wrangling dispute which goes only upon prejudices The justice or injustice of our Separation will depend on the Foundation For how can they assure themselves that those things which we call Errors and a false Worship are on the contrary Evangelical Truths and a right and lawful Worship without going on to that Examination which shews as I have already frequently observed that all those indirect attacks which they assault us with are nothing else but vain amusings and beatings of the Air which serve only to make a noise The second thing will not less engage them in the Examination of the foundation of those matters than the First For in supposing that those things which we call Errors are such in effect they must necessarily see of what nature they are and what opposition they have to true Piety to judge aright whether they are sufficient causes for a Separation and whether our conscience cannot accommodate it self to them I confess that this is no very hard matter to be known for how small a knowledge soever they may have of Religion and the Worship of God they may very easily perceive that if Transubstantiation for example is an Error they cannot but adore the substance of Bread in the room of Jesus Christ they may easily perceive that if the worshipping of Images is forbidden by the second Commandment of the Law they draw upon themselves the jealousie of God as he himself declares there they may easily perceive that if the Sacrifice of the Mass is not in effect a propitiatory Sacrifice by which they may apply to themselves the vertue of that on the Cross they do an injury to the only Sacrifice of Jesus Christ and that they vainly seek the vertue of it in an Act where it is not applyed They may easily perceive that if the Lordship that the Church of Rome or its Councils usurp over mens Consciences is ill-grounded that they render unto men a kind of adoration which is only due to God alone which cannot but be an unpardonable crime in regard of him who has said Thou shalt have no other Gods before me But whether it would be an easie or a difficult matter to be known that is not the business about which we dispute at present It is sufficient to shew that the Separation of our Fathers had just sufficient necessary and indisputable causes supposing that what they said of the Errors of the Church of Rome were true and that they could not be accused either of rashness or of Schism without contesting their supposition nor that they could contest their supposition without coming to an inspection into the very things themselves Whence it follows that all that dispute which they raise against us about Forms is but a meer vain wrangling unworthy of any sound persons If that which our Fathers have laid down concerning the Errors which the Church of Rome forces men to believe to be of her Communion be not true we do not any further pretend to defend their Separation but if it be true God and men will bear them witness that it was justly done and according to the dictates of an upright conscience They will say it may be That we ought not upon such light grounds to suppose that that which our Fathers said concerning the Errors of the Church of Rome is true since they are the Points in dispute wherein the Church of Rome pretends that we are in an Error as we pretend that she is But there cannot be any thing said more frivolous for the supposition that we make is in words of good sense and right reason because we make it to force our adversaries to come to a discussion of the things themselves upon which the judgement that ought to be made of our Separation depends and to make them acknowledge that all those Accusations which they form against our Fathers that they have broken the Christian Unity that they have forsook the Church that they have made a criminal Schism are rash accusations unjust and precipitate since they cannot rightly
there is reason for that or no it is sufficient that he consents that they should not any more have had those for their Pastors which were so before and that they should have withdrawn themselves from their communion and external worship we demand no more at present We ought now to pass on to the second Proposition upon which the Objection is grounded that I have propounded in the beginning of this Chapter and to examine whether the Priviledge of the Church of Rome is such that one ought not upon any pretence whatsoever to separate ones self from her communion All the world knows that this is the pretension of that Church and that it is for that that she makes her self the Mother and the Mistress of all others and that she has also made it to be defined in her Council of Trent It is upon that account that one of her Popes Boniface the Eighth formerly determined That it was necessary to the Salvation of every creature to be subject to the Bishop of Rome But clearly to decide so weighty a Question there seems to me to be only these two wayes The first is to enquire whether that Church can or cannot fall into Error and cease to be the True Church of Jesus Christ for if it be true that she can never fall into Errors nor lose the quality of a true Church we must conclude that we ought alwayes to remain in her Communion But if on the contrary she may erre and cease to be a true Church we must also conclude that we may and ought to separate our selves when there shall be a just occasion there The second way is that laying aside the Question Whether she may err or not we examine whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches as she pretends whether he has established her to be the perpetual and inviolable Center of the Christian Unity with a command to all the faithful not to fly off from her For if it be an Order that God has made we cannot resist it without destroying our selves but if it be only an ill-grounded pretension of that Church her communion is neither more necessary nor more inviolable than that of other particular Churches But as to the first of these wayes I have already shewn that it engages those who will follow it in the examination of the foundation and in effect the proofs that they set before us to establish the Infallibility of the Roman See are neither so clear nor so concluding that it should not be necessary to see whether the Doctrines that the Church of Rome teaches answer that pretension which she makes to be infallible and unable to fall away or to say better those proofs are so weak and so trivial that they themselves bind us to have recourse to the examination of the Doctrines of that Church to judge of her pretension by them These two Arguments are equally good as to their form The Church of Rome cannot err in the Faith therefore the things which she teaches us of Faith are true And the things which the Church of Rome teaches us are not true therefore the Church of Rome may err I do not here examine the question which of these two wayes of reasoning is the more natural I yield if they will that they should chuse the first but when they shall have chose it good sense would also require that if the things which they shall set before us to prove this Proposition The Church of Rome cannot err in the faith do no wayes satisfie the mind if instead of assuring us they plunge us into the greatest uncertainties we must pass over to the other way and by consequence we must enter into the examination of the foundation But to judge of what nature those proofs are which they give for the infallibility of the Church of Rome we need but a naked view of them For they are not the express declarations of the will of God although it should be very necessary that they should have such a one for the establishment of so great and peculiar a priviledge the knowledge of which is so very important to all Christians They are not evident consequences drawn from some passages of Scripture or some actions of the Apostles they are neither clear and convincing reasonings nor even strong presumptions and such as have much likelihood They are strained consequences which they draw as they are able from two or three passages of the Scripture and which a man that should have never heard them speak of that Infallibility with all his circumspection would not have gathered They produce the Testimony that St. Paul gives to the Church of Rome in his dayes That her faith was spoken of through all the world and they consider not that he gives the same testimony to the Thessalonians in far higher terms than to the Romans for he tells them That they were an example to the faithful and that the word of the Lord sounded from them not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place also Although they do not conclude the infallibility of the Church of Thessalonica from thence They do not see that he renders well near the same testimony to the Philippians in adding a clause that seems much more express to wit That he is assured of this very thing that he which had begun a good work in them would perform it until the day of Jesus Christ Although they cannot notwithstanding conclude infallibility from thence in the behalf of the Church of Philippi In effect these testimonies only regard the persons who at that time composed those Churches and not those who should come after them and do not found any priviledge on them They produce the passages of the Gospel that relate to S. Peter as this Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it and this I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven c. and this I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not when therefore thou art converted strengthen thy brethren and this Feed my sheep But to perceive the weakness of the consequence which they draw from these passages we need but to see that which is between two things of which it is necessary that we should be assured before we can conclude any thing First of all we must be assured that S. Peter was at Rome that he preached and fixed his See there for these actions are not so evident as they imagine they are inveloped with divers difficulties that appear unconquerable and accompanied with many circumstances that have no appearance of truth and which make at least that whole History to be doubted I confess that the Ancients did believe so but they have sometimes readily admitted Fables for truths and after all these
and which the Donatists acknowledg'd to be Orthodox was then actually and in effect spread over the whole Earth that is to say that it had a great extent among the Nations of it whereas that of the Donatists was shut up within one small part of Africk It was upon this that they abused a passage of the Canticles which they read after this manner Tell me O thou whom my soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy flocks to rest in the South explaining this in the South as if he would have noted the place and said in Africa whereas it should be read at noon-day meerly to note the hour of the day when the Shepherd led his flock under some shade for their rest This is that which makes S. Augustine also speak to them sometimes of the Apostolical Churches and those to whom S. John wrote his Apocalypse with whom they had no communion and to reproach them so often for being separated from all the World The third Observation is That that Society which the Donatists acknowledged to be Orthodox and which was in effect spread over many Nations had not cut off the Donatists from its communion nor had separated the former from it if they had not excommunicated them nor pronounced Anathema's against those who should not hold Cecilianus to be innocent or the Traditors to have been good men When any one of them return'd to the Church they did not seek to make them renounce any other thing than their Schism nor to embrace any thing besides peace And even in the judgement of the Synod of Rome Milciades and his brethren offered to hold communion with the Bishops that Majorinus had ordained and in the Conference at Carthage they offered to the Donatist Bishops to own them for Bishops and to preserve their Sees to them without requiring any other condition of them than that of brotherly Unity It was therefore the Donatists who separated themselves wilfully out of a meer spirit of division and the Church was in respect of them in a passive Separation Lastly The fourth Observation is That although the Donatists should have had any just occasion to separate yet they had urged their Separation notwithstanding as far as it could go for they had carried it so far as even to break that general bond which yet in some manner united all those who make an external profession of Christianity good and bad Orthodox and Hereticks which yet in some manner make but one body in opposition to Pagans and other people absolutely Infidels Their Principle was That all the Christians in the World except the party of Donatus being sullied with the contagion of the Traditor Cecilianus all that they had also done became sullied by the uncleanness of their persons and upon this Principle they condemned the Christianity of the Universal Church they rejected her Baptism and her Sacraments although at the bottom they had the same with hers and they look'd upon that Society to be no otherwise than an Assembly of Pagans and Infidels with whom they would have nothing common This is what St. Augustine reproaches them with in divers places in his Writings They say sayes he that they are Christians but they say also that they only are so They make no scruple to say that they know that out of their Sect there are no Christians You hold sayes he to them elsewhere that all Christian Holiness has been abolish'd among the Nations where the Apostles had establish'd it because they have communicated with those whom your Fathers condemned in their Council of Carthage Therefore it was that they thought themselves grievously affronted when the Catholicks called them their Brethren they fled from their Communion they would not so much as sit together with them and they re-baptiz'd all those who had been baptiz'd in the Church when they came over to their Communion neither more or less than if they had come out of Paganism because they maintained that in effect the Church was absolutely perish'd throughout all the Earth except in their Party These are the matters of fact that I have thought my self bound to explain We must now return to the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices and examine it in the meaning of S. Augustine and the African Fathers the proposition of which it is composed The first is That there is a Church from which it is never allow'd any man to separate himself under what pretence soever and from which all those who do so separate themselves are Schismaticks This first Proposition is ambiguous and so confused that we can very hardly comprehend in what sense the Author of the Prejudices has meant it Every one knows that there is in the World a Body of people or of Nations who profess themselves to be Christians and to whom one may yet in some manner give the name of the Church because that all such Christians are yet in some respect within the General Call of the Gospel It is therefore this Church of which he means to speak But what likelihood is there that to accuse us of Schism he should have form'd so vagous an Idea of the Church since he knows very well that we are no more separated from this body than the other communions that compose it are or than the Church of Rome her self in particular is Every one knows that this body of Christians is divided into divers communions or particular Societies that bear the name of Churches as the Greek the Roman the Protestant the Coptick the Jacobite the Nestorian the Armenian Does he mean any one of these Churches But if that be so why does he not distinctly and without any hesitation tell us which it is and if he would that it should be that of Rome what ground is there to believe that he would have it so why did he not explain himself why did he make an end even to say That it should be in our choice whether that Church should be the Greek or the Nestorian or the Jacobites and that he did not pretend to determine it To what purpose are all these goings about Every one knows yet that God alwayes preserves in the world his truly faithful and his Children who are the true Church which he has predestinated to eternal Salvation But the Author of the Prejudices has formerly declared himself against this notion of the Church and he is so very earnest to reject it that we cannot impute it to him without doing him wrong We cannot even believe that he means That we ought not to separate our selves from a Communion when it is Orthodox and when those who separate themselves from it are Schismaticks For he has also declar'd himself against this Notion of the Church because sayes he in taking this way the examination of Schism would be remitted to that of the Opinions and that we must alwayes know whether the Communion that they forsake is Orthodox
Prejudices means that that visible extension is a perpetual mark of the Orthodox communion that alwayes distinguishes it from impure or heretical communions so that this Orthodox communion as far as it is visible can never be restrained to a few persons and places it is certain that this was not the opinion of S. Augustine nor that of the other Fathers and it is certain also that the celebrated Authors of the Church of Rome reject the Proposition in this sense as false and absurd and that in effect it is manifestly contrary to experience To set forth the truth of what I propound I will begin with experience and as that of our Age presents it self first to our view I say that if we must act at this day according to the principle That the true Orthodox Church ought to be visibly extended over all Nations we must conclude that there is no true Orthodox Church in the world For it is most true that of all the communions which at this day divide Christianity there is not any one to whom this mark can agree I will not say that there are divers parties in the known world which have not so much as yet heard of Christianity nor that there are others who after having received it have absolutely rejected it to embrace the Mahometan Religion I will not here speak of the Greek communion separated from the Roman nor of the Coptick or Nestorian or of the Jacobites or Armenian which evidently have not that visible extension throughout all Nations I will only speak of the Roman and the Protestant as they are at present He must sayes the Author of the Prejudices be wholly blind that can dare to maintain that the society of Calvinists which is wholly shut out of Italy Spain Flanders a great part of Germany Swedeland Denmark Muscovy Asia Africa of almost all America is that which Jesus Christ has spread over all the world But before he argues after this manner he ought to take heed that we cannot say the same thing of the Roman communion For is it not true that it is at this day excluded from Swedeland Denmark a great part of Germany a part of Switzerland a part of Greece Muscovy Africa Aethiopia Persia Tartary China Japan of the Indies and from the greatest part of America And the Author of the Prejudices ought not to pretend the prevailing of some Colonies of Missionaries whom the Pope sends here and there to gain Proselytes For since he will not have it that we should gain any thing by the Colonies of English and Dutch who have establish'd themselves in all the parts of the world why would he help himself by the Missionaries and Pensionaries that the Congregations de fide propaganda maintain in foreign Countreys Why should they be more reckon'd for any thing than those Colonies of English and Dutch who have the exercises of their Religion as free as those of the Roman Communion They are sayes he such Merchants as are in those Countreys only for the sake of Trade But do not those Merchants pray to God in the form of their Religion in what Countreys and with what design soever they are Is it that those Merchants being so much ty'd as they are to their Trading make no open profession of their Religion or that they have not in the greatest part of those places where they are their ordinary Assemblies with their Ministers as well as the Missionaries He must yield in good earnest that the Christians are now divided and separated from one another about matters of faith and worship in their different Societies or communions of which each one has its seat and bounds apart beyond which we cannot say they are visibly extended if we would speak with any reason and that there is no one that is throughout all Nations in the form of a communion of visible Society From whence it follows that all this dispute of the Author of the Prejudices is but a beating the air and which he can never apply to any real subject The Experience of former Ages is not less contrary to the Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices than that of our Age. For if we consult History we shall find that it has fallen out often that an Heretical communion has spread it self every where while the Orthodox communion was so limited that it did not seem to take up any space If in the time of the Arians they had disputed by this principle by which the Author of the Prejudices would decide our differences I mean if they would have treated that communion as Heretical that was not visibly spread over all the Nations and that as Orthodox which was the Arians had easily overcome The Heresie of the Arians and Eunomians sayes S. Jerom possess'd all the East except Athanasius and Paulinus S. Hilary sayes the same thing The greatest part of the Ten Provinces of Asia excepting Eleusius and some others do not truly know God In those time sayes the Author of the Life of S. Gregory Nazianzen the Church was oppressed by the Arian Heresie many Bishops were banished and vexed by torments and calumnies a thousand wayes many Presbyters and many numerous Flocks were brought down to the utmost misery exposed to the injuries of the weather as no more having any house of prayer where they might meet That Heresie had almost fill'd all the Earth and it triumph'd being upheld by the power of the Emperour so that good men had not so much as the justice of the Laws against the wicked And because the Pastors or to say better the concealed Wolves under the appearance of Pastors had the liberty to drive the Orthodox Bishops out of the Churches who alone were worthy to serve Jesus Christ the Soveraign Bishop it hapned that some overcome with fear others deceived by fair words others gained by money others surprized through their own simplicity embrac'd that Heresie and opened their bosoms and gave their communion to their adversaries This was that that oblig'd the Fathers to elevate the little number and the little flock above extension and multitude Where are those men saith Gregory Nazianzen who reproach us with our poverty and insolently boast themselves of their riches who would define the Church by multitude and contemn the little flock They measure Divinity they weigh the people in the ballance they esteem the illiterate and cover with injuries the lights of the world they heap together the common stones and despise the pretious not remembring that the more the thick darkness surpasses in number the Stars the more the ordinary stones surpass the pretious in quantity the more those Stars and pretious stones surpass the ordinary stones in purity and excellency This Father who had seen in his time the Hereticks masters of the whole Church and their communion spread very wide and far in the East and in the West while the Orthodox durst not appear was so far from having
shall be shaken because many in whom grace seem'd to be resplendent shall yield to the persecutors and some of the most firm among the faithful shall be troubled The Church sayes he shall not appear Ecclesia non apparebit She will not therefore have then that visible extension which the Author of the Prejudices would have to be her perpetual mark for all Ages He further acknowledges the same thing in his Epistle to Vincentius where he treats of the state of the Church under the Arians There he teaches in express terms That the Church is sometimes obscured and covered with clouds through the great number of offences that she is then only eminent in her most firm defenders while the multitude of the weak and carnal is overwhelmed with the floods of temptation That under the reign of the Arians the simple suffered themselves to be deceiv'd that others yielding through fear dissembled and in appearance consented to Arianism That indeed some of the most firm escaped the snares of those Hereticks but that they were but few in number in comparison of the rest That nevertheless some of them generously suffer'd banishment and some others lay hid here and there throughout the Earth I pray tell me what visible extension could the Orthodox communion have then which subsisted only in a small number of the firm of whom even the greatest part had suffered exile or lay hid here and there throughout all the Earth I confess that History notes that there were yet some small flocks in some places of the East and of the West who set up their Assemblies apart as at Edessa at Nazianzen at Antioch and in some Provinces of France and Germany but what was this in comparison of the Arian communion which had fill'd the Churches and held Councils as we have so often proved We must therefore seriously profess that this visible extension is a vain and deceitful mark when they would make it perpetual to the true Church as the Author of the Prejudices would make it and that no one could abuse with greater injustice the Authority of S. Augustine than he has done We must profess also that a small handful of the Faithful a little party have right to separate themselves from the whole multitude I mean from a communion spread over all the world which has on its side the Ministry the Pulpits the Councils the Schools Titles Dignities and all that retinue of temporal splendour when it has not the true Faith For the rest that which I have handled in this Chapter about the two former Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices already sufficiently lets us see the falseness of his argument For if he would take the pains to read this Chapter with never so little application he will see all these following Propositions well establish'd there 1. That in General this Author has not compris'd the true Hypothesis of S. Augustine nor the state of his dispute against the Donatists 2. That he can draw no advantage from the divers wayes in which that Father conceived the word Church 3. That the separation which that Father judg'd to be fit to be condemned and wicked under what pretence soever it should be made is wholly different from that which is between the Church of Rome and us 4. That there is not any Christian Society from which one may not lawfully separate ones self in a certain case and manner 5. That that which is disputed between the Church of Rome and us being of this number they must consider the causes and circumstances of it rightly to judge of it and not pretend to convince us of Schism without entring upon any other discussion 6. That according to the principles of S. Augustine the Church of Rome is Schismatical in respect of us supposing that she is in error because it is she that has broken Christian Unity and that we are in respect of her in a passive separation 7. That it is absurd to make that visible extension a perpetual mark of the true Church which way soever they take it 8. That this pretended mark is contrary to the experience of our Age and does not properly agree to any one of these Societies that at this day divide Christianity 9. That it is contrary to the experience of the Ages past and to the Doctrine of the Fathers 10. That it is rejected in the sense of the Author of the Prejudices by the famous Doctors of the Roman communion 11. That it has no foundation in the dispute of S. Augustine against the Donatists 12. That it is even directly opposite to the Doctrine of that Father These are the just and natural consequences that are drawn from the things which I have handled in this Chapter I will examine in the following the other Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices CHAP. V. A further Examination of the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices upon the subject of our Separation THe Third Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices is already sufficiently confuted by what I have said He sayes that since our Society is not visibly extended throughout all Nations therefore it cannot be the True Church But we have shewn him that we cannot at this day rationally attribute that visible extension throughout all Nations to any of the Societies that divide Christianity and by consequence that it is a chimerical mark by which we may conclude that there is no true Church in the world since there is none which is not visibly excluded from many Nations We have shewn him also that his pretended mark does not agree either with the experience of the Ages past nor with the doctrine of the Fathers nor even with that of the Doctors of the Roman Church and that instead of having any foundation in the Doctrine of S. Augustine it is evidently contrary to him So that we have nothing to do at present but to go on to the Examination of the Fourth and Fifth Proposition They bear this sense That the Calvinists urge the principle of the Donatists far higher than ever those Schismaticks did For as for them they did not say that there was any time wherein the whole Church had fallen into Apostasy and they excepted the Communion of Donatus whereas the Calvinists would have it that there have been whole Ages wherein all the Earth had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation That the Societies of the Berengarians the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in which he sayes that some of us include the Church could not be that Catholick Church whereof S. Augustine speaks To establish that which he layes to our Charge concerning the entire extinction of the Church he first produces the testimony of Calvin This is sayes he that which Calvin has distinctly declared in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans where after having pretended that the threatning that S. Paul uses against those who do not remain in
more than those External Guides that God has Established in the Church to lead men to the Scripture and even such Guides as cannot hinder us from going thither of our selves if we will and it is the Scripture the voice of the Apostles or to say better the voice of Jesus Christ that speaks by the Apostles that does all There is therefore a great difference between those two sorts of Ministers the one preceded the Church the other follows it the one is immediately Communicated by God and the other is Communicated by means of men the one has an Independent and Soveraign Authority and Infallibility on its side and the other is exposed to Vices Disorders Errours and humane weaknesses Inferior and depending on the Church the one is every way Divine and the other is partly Divine and partly Humane 7. From that sixth Observation there arises another not less important and that which I have already touched upon in divers places of this Treatise that is That the Ordinary Ministry is a Right that belongs to the True Church and of which it can never be spoiled The Reason of this Truth is taken from the very Nature of the Church For the Church being a Society that God has call'd together by the Ministry of his Apostles and which he yet every day calls together and upholds by the word of his Scriptures and the use of his Sacraments we must necessarily say that in forming it he has given it in that very thing that he has formed it a sufficient full and entire Right to make use of all the means that may help its preservation and upholding amongst which that of the Ministry is without doubt most considerable That same Providence that gives men a Natural Life and appoints them to preserve their life by that Food it furnishes them with gives them by that very thing a right to employ persons to gather that food together and to prepare it to the end they may make use of it according to what it is designed for and it would be a great Extravagance to demand of a man what Right he has to prepare himself to eat and drink for he could have nothing more to say but that the Nature that gave him life gave him at the same time all the Right that was necessary to provide for the upholding of that life And to make use of another Example The same Nature or to say better the same Providence that Assembles men together in a Civil Society and ordains them in their so uniting together to uphold that Society by a rational Order does it not give them at the very same time and by the same Right that Assembles them a Right to have Magistrates to Govern them by and to make the Laws of that Society to be Executed to have Judges to decide their differences to have Remedies for the Healing of Diseases and Tradesmen for the publick good And would it not be an absurdity to demand of a people what Right they had to have Magistrates Judges Physicians Tradesmen Teachers of Commerce Lawyers since they could not have a fuller and juster Right than that which is founded upon the reason of Order and the Society it self We need but to apply these Examples to the Subject we are upon The Church is a Body to which God has given a Spiritual Life and he has ordained it to be preserved and upheld in the use of Mystical Aliments of which he himself has made a publick Magazine in his Holy Scriptures it is therefore evident that he has given it by that very thing a Right to have Ministers or Pastors who should prepare those Sacred Aliments and season them for its Spiritual Nourishment The Church is a Religious Society composed of divers persons that God himself has Assembled to live together not in Confusion but in Order he would have that Society subsist he has appointed it to uphold and preserve it self he himself has suggested the means he has then without doubt by that very thing given a Right to have Guides to Govern her Pastors to lead them forth into the Heavenly Pastures of the Scriptures Ministers to dispense the Divine Sacraments that he has instituted for her Watch-men and Guides to be careful of her and to go before her In a word he who has given Faith Piety and Christian Holiness to the Church has at the same time indispensably obliged them to these four Duties one is to persevere in the Exercise of those Vertues unto the end The other is to defend themselves against the Assaults and wiles of the Enemy of their Salvation the third is to increase and strengthen themselves more and more and lastly to propagate them as much as in them lyes from us down to our Children and even amongst Strangers that is to say among those who are not as yet in that Relation It follows therefore necessarily that that has given the Church a sufficient full and entire Right for the Ministry since the Ministry is but a fit and lawful means for all that It could not have a Right more lawful than that which is founded upon those indispensable Duties for in that case it is not only a Right that makes the thing just but it is an obligation that imposes a necessity of it as in the State the Right that every one has to learn the Will of the Prince is indisputable because it is built upon the obligation that lies upon every one to conform himself to it It is clear then that there could not have been a Right to have Ministers more lawful than that of a Faithful People a True Church since it is founded upon those four Duties which I have noted that are indispensable and that give not only a Right but an Obligation to have a Ministry But we ought here to take notice of the Fallacy that their Missionaries are wont to make and that the Authour of the Prejudices who has Adopted their Method would have us make with them For see after what manner they argue Where there is no lawful Ministry there is no True Church But among the Protestants there is no True Church I set aside the Question Whether we have or whether we have not a lawful Ministry in the same sence that he intends I will only at present consider his way of Reasoning that makes the True Church depend upon a lawful Ministry Admitting that to be a True Church where the Ministry is and denying that to be a True Church where the Ministry is not I say that this is a vain deceitful and illusory way of Reasoning to which I oppose this other Argument Where there is the True Church there is a Right to a Lawful Ministry But the True Church is among the Protestants Therefore the Right to a Lawful Ministry is among the Protestants Of those two ways of arguing it is certain that this latter is the justest and almost only just right and natural For the True Church
Consequence it is to that we must refer that Call If I had a mind here to set down all the passages of St. Augustine when he establishes this Truth I should engage my self in an excessive Tediousness It shall suffice to set down some few that may clearly let us see what his Doctrine was upon this matter Judas says he Represented the Body of the wicked and Saint Peter represented the Body of the good the Body of the Church I say The Body of the Church but the Church which consists in the good For if St. Peter had not represented that Church our Lord would not have said to him I give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven For if that had been said but to St. Peter only the Church does not do it But if it be done in the Church to wit that the things that are bound on Earth are bound in Heaven and that those which are loosed on Earth are loosed in Heaven in as much as he which the Church Excommunicates is Excommunicated in Heaven and he to whom the Church is Reconciled is Reconciled in Heaven since that I say is done in the Church it follows that St. Peter receiving the Keys represented the Holy Chvrch. And as the good who are in the Church were represented in the person of St Peter so the wicked who are in the Church were represented in the person of Judas and it is to those that Jesus Christ said Me you have not always And further after having described the Church of the Truly Faithful in these Terms God has sent his Son into the World to the end that those who believe in him should by the laver of Regeneration be loosed from their Sins as well Original as Actual and that being delivered from Everlasting Damnation they should live in Faith Hope and Charity as Pilgrims in this World amidst Temptations and Labours and amidst the Corporal and Spiritual Consolations of God walking in Christ Jesus who is their way But because in that very way in which they walk they are not free from those Sins that arise through the Infirmity of this Life he has appointed them the saving Remedy of Alms to help their prayers which he has commanded them to make Forgive our Trespasses as we forgive them that Trespass against us After I say having described the Church of the Just in that manner he adds This is that which makes the Church blessed in Hope in this miserable life and it is this Church that Saint Peter represented by the primacy of his Apostleship Nam Ecclesiae gerebat figurata generalitate personam If you look upon Saint Peter in himself he was but a man by Nature a Christian by Grace and the first of the Apostles by the super-abundance of Grace But when Jesus Christ said to him I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven he Represented the whole Body of the Church that Church I say which in that Age was moved with divers Temptations as by so many Storms Torrents and Tempests and which yet does not fall into ruine because it is founded upon the Rock from which Saint Peter took his Name I say that Saint Peter took his Name from it for as the Name of Christian is derived from Christ and not that of Christ from that of Christian so that of Saint Peter is derived from the Rock and not that of the Rock from the Name of St. Peter and therefore Jesus Christ said to him Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church For Saint Peter having made this Confession Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God our Lord told him that he would build his Church upon that Rock which he had confessed For that Rock was Jesus Christ upon which Saint Peter himself is built according to what is said No man can lay other Foundation then what is already laid which is Jesus Christ It is that Church therefore that was founded upon Jesus Christ which received from him in the Person of Saint Peter the Keys of that Kingdom that is to say the Power of binding and loosing In the same sense he says elsewhere That there are some things said to Saint Peter that plainly seem properly to belong to him and which nevertheless cannot be so well understood if they are not referred to the Church that Saint Peter represented and of which he was the Figure by that Primacy which he had among the Disciples as are adds he these words I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven Yet elsewhere Jesus Christ has given the Keys to his Church to the end that that which it should bind on Earth should be bound in Heaven and that whatsoever it should loose should be loosed that is to say to the end that he that should not believe that his Sins are pardoned in the Church to him they should not be pardoned and that on the contrary he who being in the bosom of the Church should beleive that his Sins were pardoned and who should be reduced by a holy correction should obtain pardon It is not rashly says he in another place that I make two Orders of men One sort are so much in the House of God that they are themselves that House that is built upon a Rock and that which is called the only Dove the Spouse without Spot and Wrinkle the Inclosed Garden the hidden Fountain the Wells of Living Water the Paradise where the Fruit of Apples is It is this House which has received the Keys and the Power to bind and loose and it is this to which he said That if any would not hearken to it when it Reproved and Corrected that he should be esteemed as a Heathen man and a Publican That House consists in Vessels of Gold and Silver in Precious Stones and Incorruptible Wood and it is to that that Saint Paul says Bear with one another in love keeping the Vnity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace and again The Temple of God is Holy which Temple ye are It Consists in the good in the Faithful in the Holy Servants of God spread abroad every where joyned together in a spiritual Vnity by the Communion of the same Sacraments whether they know one another by sight or whether they do not But as for the others they are so in the House as not at all to belong to the Structure of the House and they are not in that Society that is Fruitful in Peace and Righteousness They are as the Chaff amidst the good Corn and we cannot deny that they are in the House since the Apostle says that there are in the
the Churches and not those private mens who Communicated it they were bound to refer theirs to the greatest Glory of God and the Edification of his Church and not to the Wills and Interests of the Court of Rome and its Prelates altho' ir was through their Channel that they had received it They did well therefore to make use of that which they had of good in their Call to purify that which was bad in it and they also did well to make use of it against the ill intention of those who had given it them for an ill end even as those who have received Baptism from an Heretical or Schismatical Society are bound by that same Baptism which they have received from them to oppose themselves as much as possibly they can to that Heresy or Schism and to make use of their very Baptism for it altho' it should be against the intention of those who gave it to them I acknowledge also that there were some few who received their Call immediately from the Churches hand I would say the Body of the faithful people and we may say of those that their Call was extraordinary in the sense that we call unusual things Extraordinary which happen very rarely and which are done against Custom and ordinary practice For howsoever that those Calls were not unlawfully made and without Right as I have proved in the foregoing Chapter it is notwithstanding True that it is not nor ought to be the Common Practice and that it has no place but in a case of absolute Necessity So also in the Church of Rome the Call of Martin V. may be said to be Extraordinary who was called to the Papacy immediately by the whole Body of the Latin Prelates assembled in the Council of Constance and not by the Colledge of Cardinals as it is ordinarily done As to those Ministers who succeeded them and who received their Ordination from the hands of the first Reformers their Call was without doubt Ordinary and conformable to the practice of the Antient Church according to the Idea that the Scripture gives us of it and all that it can have of Extraordinary consists in this that in the distinction of Bishops and Presbyters they have not followed them and it is the Presbytery and not the Bishop who gives the Ordination but in that very thing they did nothing remote from that which was practised in the Apostolick Church acording to the Idea of it that the Scripture furnishes us with since Saint Paul saith in express terms concerning Timothy That he had received it by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery I do not here enter upon the Question whether that Distinction is of Divine or only of Humane Right I will say something to that in the close I do not so much as blame those who observe it as a thing very Antient and I would not have it made a matter of difference in those places wherein it is established but I say where that Distinction is not observed as it is not nor can be amongst the Protestants of this Kingdom their Call will not cease to be lawful since besides the Case of absolute necessity which sufficiently dispences with that Form besides that neither the Bishop nor the Presbyter are of themselves any more than Executors of the Will of the Church in that Regard and not the Masters of that Call besides that I say there is a Formal Text of the Apostle that justifies the Right that the Church has to give the Imposition of hands by the Presbytery which alone is sufficient to stop the mouth of all Contradiction whatsoever That being so explained we may easily see what we ought to answer to all those petty Objections of which the Author of the Prejudices has composed his fourth and fifth Chapters Some says he were called to the Ministry and made Pastors only by Lay-men others were ordained by Priests only and those who had been Ordained by Bishops lifted themselves up against their Ordainers and that Church which had given them their Mission I have shewn in the foregoing Chapter that those who were called by Lay-men that is to say by the whole Body of the Church had a sufficient Call That which I have also said concerning those who received their Ordination from the Presbytery does not leave any more difficulty and as to those who resisted their own Ordainers I have shewn that they did nothing in all that whereunto their very Office did not bind them We may see saith he yet further by the thirty first Article of their Confession of Faith that it was upon this supposition of a power given immediately by God to these men Extraordinarily sent to Order the Church a new that all their pretended Reformation is founded That Article of our Confession of Faith says not that the Church had absolutely perished nor that the Ministry was intirely extinguished but that the Church was fallen into Ruine and Desolation and that its State was interrupted which only shews that she as well as the Ministry under which she was were both in the greatest Corruption and this is that which we also hold It says not that God had given an immediate Mission to the Reformers but that God had raised them up after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new That signifies that God by his Providence gave them Extaordinary Gifts to undertake so great a Work as that of the Reformation was and that he accompanied them with his Blessing All that includes neither a new Revelation nor a new immediate Mission and hinders not that the Right which they had to employ themselves in it should not be annexed to their Charge and that it should not be common not only to all the Pastors but even to all Christians as I have shewn in my Second part Their Discipline adds he Ordains that the Priests of the Roman Church who upon turning of Calvinists should be Elected to the Office of Ministers should receive a new Imposition of hands which shews that they suppose their precedent Mission to be Null and so that that which Luther and Zuinglius Received from the Church of Rome signify'd nothing whence it follows that that which they ascribe to them can be no other than Extraordinary There is a great Difference between the Call which was given before the Reformation and that which is at this day given in the Roman Church since those Two Communions are separated The Former was indeed very much corrupted but yet nevertheless it supposes the consent of the whole Latin Church and it was not given by a Party so confirmed in Errour where the second supposes no other than the consent of a Party so confirmed in those Errours which we believe to be most contrary to the Purity of the Gospel which makes the matter so that our Society can no more look upon it as a Lawfull Call in regard of it and its Service Besides that when
to our Children as well as to us it ought to be given not only to us but to our Children So that without going any further I have in that respect all the Certainty that I can reasonably desire As to the second I say that the Word Baptise equally signifying in the Original Tongue to plunge and to wash and being used divers times in this latter sence as it may appear in the Translation of Mons in the seventh of Saint Mark and eleventh of Saint Luke and there being moreover nothing in the Scripture that precisely enjoins Immersion or forbids Aspersion it is my part to believe that in the Thoughts of Jesus Christ those two wayes of Baptizing are indifferent and that so much the more as I know the Spirit of the Gospel is not so nice and punctual about forms or the manners of External Actions which is proper to Superstition So that I have further for that all the Assurance that I ought to have For the third being certain as I am by the Promises of Jesus Christ that God has alwayes Preserved a True Church in the World that is to say the Truly Faithful howsoever mixt they may have been with the Worldly I am assured also that the Baptism which was Administred not only before the Reformation but since in the Latin Church and in other Christian-Societies where the Essence of Baptism remains is good because that being made in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost it is the Baptism of the True Church although it be administred by Persons filled with Errors and Superstitions Baptism is not theirs they are only the Ministers of it That Sacrament belongs to God and his Truly Faithful ones in what Quarter of the World soever they be That same Scripture that sayes That the Promise is made to us and to our Children and to all that are a far of even as many as the Lord shall call says by a necessary Consequence that the Seal of that Promise which is Baptism and all the other Rights of the Covenant of Jesus Christ belongs to us and to our Children that is to say to the Truly Faithful The Hereticks who Administer it do not do it as a good that belongs to them under that Quality for in that respect nothing belongs to them but as a good that belongs to the True Church the Dispensation whereof they have by the part which they have yet with her For they Baptise not by that which divides them from the truly Faithful but by that which after some manner Associates and unites them with them It is therefore the Baptism of the True Church which they give and not that of Heresy it is the Church that Baptises by them and in that respect they are yet as I have said the Dispensers of its goods If the Author of the Prejudices desires yet further to see a greater Number ot proofs drawn from the same Scripture that should Establish this Truth he needs but to read what Saint Augustine has wrote in his Treatise against the Epistle of Parmenio and that of Baptism against the Donatists and he will learn there not to make any more Questions of that Nature I know not for the rest whether he as well as the others of his Communion who shall take the pains to read this work will be satisfied But I dare say at least that I have done all that was possible for me to do to set before them without Offence the Truths that are most Important for them to know It belongs to them to make a serious Reflection upon that which I have represented to them and upon the present State of Christianity which the prophaneness Impiety and Debauchery of mens Minds do every day reduce into an Evident danger of ruine if we do not bring a Remedy both on the one and the other side Nevertheless instead of having in view that grand Interest upon which the Glory of God wholly depends and the Salvation of men they apply themselves only to destroy us and their Passion prevails to that height that they do not take heed of making irreparable Breaches in Religion as that is of bringing the Use and Authority of the Holy Scripture to nothing provided they can but do us any Mischief But although they should do whatsoever they pleas'd God would alwayes be a Witness on our Side that in the Foundation of the Cause that upon which we have Separated from them is the Love which we have for the Truth and the Desire that we have to Work out our own Salvation And to let them see that it is not a false Prejudice that Corrupts us let them go through all the Christian Communions that are in the world Let them Judg in cold blood and I am assured that they will come to a serious Agreement that ours is the purest Church nd the most approaching to the Primitive one Our Opinions are the Fundamental Opinions of Religion which are great Solid and Convincing our Worship has nothing that is not Evangelical for it consists in Prayers to God in Thanksgivings in Singing of Psalms in Celebration of Fasts in Humiliation in Acts of Repentance in tears and groans when we are prest with the thoughts of our Sins and the Wrath of God our Morals consist more in Exhortations in Censures in Corrections in Threatnings on Gods side in Representations of the Motives that bind us to do good Works then in unprofitable decisions of Cases of Conscience Our Government is plain remote from the Formalities of the Bar founded as much as can be upon good Reason Justice and Charity but very opposite to the Maximes of Humane Policy and especially to Ambition Covetousness and Vanity which we believe to be the Mortal Enemies of Religion Every one in the World knows that and yet notwithstanding the Author of the Prejudices and all those who with him take false lights have not fail'd to cry out against us not only after a very uncharitable but an unchristian manner As for us we shall alwayes pray to God for those who will not Love us we shall bless them that Curse us but we shall also with Gamaliel give them this Advice Take heed that in Tormenting us you do not fight against God instead of fighting with him Let us pray on both sides that he would give us his Blessing and his Peace and that he would make us to do his Will FINIS A TABLE OF THE CONTENTS of the CHAPTERS The First Part. Wherein it is shewn that our Ancestors were obliged to Examine by themselves the State of Religion and of the Church in their Days CHap. I. General Considerations upon this Controversy The Division of this Treatise Page 1. Chap. II. That the State of the Government of the Latin Church some Ages ago gave to our Fathers Prejudices of its Corruption in Doctrine and Worship sufficient to drive them more nearly to Examine their Religion Page 8. Chap. III. That