who should doubt or not believe what has not been decided but by a Pope should neither be accus'd of Errour or Temerity provided he did not contradict the Pope publickly and with Scandal Behold here the very first breach which has been made at least in the Sorbon against its ancient Doctrine But in the mean time this has not hinder'd those very Persons who incourag'd this Doctor and that were ingag'd by Interest with the Court of Rome to reject this personal Infallibility of the Pope whenever they had any regard of their reputation amongst learned men This is evident by Cardinal Perron who in his Reply to the King of Great Britain l. 6. p. 1083. expresly acknowledges that the onely expedient to determine Disputes of Religion with a certainty of Faith is by a General Council Were the Service saies he taken away from the Original Tongue and transferr'd into another all means of celebrating universal Councils and having any certitude or assurance of matters of Faith would cease For there being no certitude of the genuine sense of Scripture by our particular Interpretation since no Interpretation of Scripture is of private inspiration and we having no way left us of resolution with certitude of Faith in debates which rise about Religion upon the meaning of Scripture besides the voice of the Church speaking in General Councils evident it is that whatever it be which takes away from the Church the means of holding General Councils takes away from it all means of deciding the Disputes of Christian Religion with certitude of Faith Cardinal de Richelieu in his Book of Controversies which has been approv'd by the late Mons. Lescot Bishop of Chartres and divers other Divines exceedingly devoted to the Court of Rome acknowledges the same thing Lib. 3. c. 5. p. 424. Since there is saies he no Oecumenical Council which injoyns the use of the Images of the Divine Persons it is evident that 't is no Article of Faith supposing that for the Principle That onely General Councils can frame Articles of Faith Thus we see that the Doctrine of Infallibility which had been promoted by Mons. Duval with some kind of fear and reserve was abandon'd by the most knowing persons of the Church and chiefly by those who defended it against the Hereticks because they would not engage the cause of the Catholick Religion in defence of an Opinion so insupportable and therefore the Favourites of the Roman Court were then contented that this Opinion should pass for problematick onely Whence it came to pass that Mons. Duval who had but just propos'd it in this manner was all his life in so great esteem at Rome that he was look'd upon there as the person in the world who had render'd the greatest services to the holy See and that all the Nuns had order not to doe any thing here without his advice But finding this tentative succeed so happily and that the Iesuites having gain'd the Catholick Universities had fill'd all mens thoughts with this infinite power of the Pope which was highly advantagious to them for the withdrawing of them from the Jurisdiction of the Bishops they no longer remain'd in this moderation They pretended that it was not enough for the French to permit them to say the Pope was infallible but so order'd the matter that no man was suffered to acknowledge him for less They were contented that Mons. Duval should say that it was no matter of Faith to believe the Pope infallible because this reserve was necessary at that point of time for the currenter passage of the Doctrine but having first begun to distribute it in this manner they did not long rest there the design is to make men believe that the Doctrine of the Faculty of Paris opposite to this Infallibility which in Mons. Duval's daies was neither an Errour nor any rash Opinion is since that time though the Church never thought of any change become a manifest Heresie This is what the Iesuites have exceedingly farther'd For 't is about 5 or 6 years past that Father Theophile Raynaud a Iesuite of Lions publish'd a Book with this Title 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ipse dixit to shew not onely that the Pope is infallible but that it is matter of Faith that he is so and by consequent those that doubt of it Hereticks and he treats Mons. Duval very ill in his Book whom in contempt he calls a certain Doctor for his caution in not so openly venting this false Doctrine as a new Article of Faith And because they saw this enterprise of theirs was not punished as it deserv'd growing daily more insolent they proceeded to that extravagant impiety of their Theses of the College de Clermont which is now the object of the indignation of all France daring publickly to maintain even in the midst of Paris it self and in face of the Parliament That the Catholick Truth which opposes the Heresie of the Greeks concerning the Pope's Primacy is That Jesus Christ has given to all Popes the very same Infallibility which himself had not onely in Questions de Jure but in those also de Facto By this 't is visible to what their boldness may aspire if not timely prevented and repress'd and what progress these monstrous Opinions are like to make to the total destruction of the Liberties of the Gallican Church so precious to our Ancestors unless we be more vigilant in stopping its carreer And in earnest it is very hard it should not be so if we but consider a little those three Expedients which the abettors of the Court of Rome make use of to establish their Maxims The First is the Company of Iesuites spread over the face of the Universe and got to be Masters of the greatest part of the Colleges so as all the World being imbu'd with these Principles from their infancie as 't were Opinions not advantageous to the Church but the Court Politick of Rome they are receiv'd with respect as if they constituted a part of our Religion so as it is quite against the hair of any other because the Iesuites accustom those who have once plac'd their belief in them to look upon men as persons suspected of their Faith who in this are not of their opinion There is the hands of many persons a Treatise of the late Father Eustachius Gault a very knowing and pious Father de l' Oratoire nominated by the late King for Bishop of Marseilles wherein he mentions how dangerous it is for this very reason lest all the Colleges should in time and by degrees fall into the hands of the Iesuites The Second means is the care they take concerning Books blasting all that they find containing any thing of the ancient Maxims of the School of Paris suppressing them all that they can or at least so ordering the matter as to retrench whatever is not in their favour as they have done by a large Discourse of Guicciardin treating of the politick Incroachment of the
has most ingenuously acknowledged And how indeed can that Party exclaim against his Majestie or his Laws accusing the Regulars as the persons culpable and the Seculars as the persons accidentally and for their sakes onely obnoxious and punish'd whose demerits were the cause It is for these therefore my Lord I would sooner plead for mercy and in earnest I wish it might consist with the Wisdom of the Legislative power to state a difference between them But we have already described the Expedient Let them first renounce their dangerous Opinions by some such publick irreversible and authentick Act as may totally cancel the just presumption which lies at their doors and at once remove that intolerable scandal which the World does universally charge them withall and which even one of their own acknowledges to be their due after a thousand notorious Examples Proprium esse Ecclesiae odisse Caesares That Popes have even a natural Antipathy to Kings It is the Reverse my Lord of these Doctrines and of all those fatal Images of Jesuitical Disloyalty for which the Church of England alone will have the honour to be deservedly celebrated to Posterity And if his Majestie do not love and cherish her above all the Churches and Professions under Heaven a Church which has so constantly maintained a Truth so ancient so pure and so obliging to Kings even in the sense and interpretation of her very Adversaries who have the least grain of true Illumination and ingenuity the Miracle of His and Her stupendious Restauration will rise up in Judgment against us But He has already done it to his eternal renown and I have no more to adde but that God Almighty would still maintain what he has so signally wrought amongst us And for those heroick Assertors of what not onely concerns the French Kings but indeed all the Crown'd Heads of Christendome besides mine Option and Augure is That as God gave Aegypt to the King of Babylon for his hire and reward in having chastiz'd those wicked Nations he was angry with so it may please him to give these sincere Defenders of Jansenius and other Truths in opposition to the Errors of the Roman Court the Light in fine of his divine Truth and to emerge out of that Aegyptian Darkness in which the rest are so miserably involv'd These with my Prayers for your Lordship 's consummate Felicity are the Votes of My Lord Your Honour's most obedient and most obliged servant THE PERNICIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF THE New HERESIE of the IESUITES AGAINST The KING and the STATE Advice to the Reader THis Treatise being written two years since and several Copies thereof dispers'd among divers persons of Condition it was deemed the conjuncture of the present Affairs might render the Publication of it necessary for the benefit both of the Church and the State But it is thought fit to advertise that the Author of this Piece having made use in it of some Memoires concerning Infallibility which he had before prepar'd these Notes happening to fall into the hands of a person of small Iudgment he caused them to be printed under the Title of A Defence of the Liberties of the Gallican Church c. adding of himself a great many impertinent and indiscreet particulars which have exceedingly disfigur'd these Memoires IT does not suffice that our Divines have represented to the Church the Exorbitances of the New Heresie of the Iesuites in what concerns Religion and the honour of God to whom they would equal a mortal man by a most sacrilegious impiety the faithful servants of the King find themselves oblig'd likewise to elevate their voices and to represent those pernicious Consequences as to what regards the safety of his Sacred Person and the good of his Estate The Apostle S. Peter establishes for the two principal parts of Piety the Fear of God and the Honour which is due to Kings Deum timete Regem honorificate If these Divines have satisfied the first of these obligations by the just aversion they have stirr'd up in all pious persons to the pernicious adulation of the Iesuites which they have discover'd to be no less then a kind of Idolatry it were but reasonable that others should satisfie the second by inspiring all those who bear any love or affection to their King with the horrour which they ought to have of a Doctrine which may prove to funest to his Person and is in danger of ravishing from him the most august and supreme Quality that he has receiv'd from God which is to depend on him alone in Temporals and to be independent of all other Powers upon the face of the Earth True it is that his Majesty has already been advertis'd of it and has clearly perceiv'd by that light and vivacity of spirit which all Europe admires in a Prince so young of what pernicious Consequence this novel Doctrine was which they would introduce into his State and the advantage which they might take to establish their pretensions who design nothing more then to reach the Heads of Kings and even subject them in Temporals It were fit therefore that all the world knew as much that those who are not sensibly touch'd with the prospect of an Error so prejudicial to Religion as falsly imagining it to concern the Divines onely may at least be affected with the consideration of the prejudice which it may bring to the State and to the sacred and inviolable rights of the Crowns of our Kings But since the address which has been made use of by the Partisans of those corrupt Opinions has been to infuse it into the minds of the people masked under the vizor of Religion and respect to the Pope and to decry the opposers of it as enemies to the holy See it is necessary we should defeat their artifice by discovering it to the world and by teaching them to distinguish as our fathers have done before us the Apostolical See from the Court Politick of Rome which are things totally different For that which we are to understand by the Apostolical Seat is that Spiritual Authority of the Head of the Church which Iesus Christ gave to S. Peter residing in the Pope and which all Christians are oblig'd to acknowledge and reverence by an inseparable union with it as the very center of the Communion of the Church But the Court Politick of Rome is nothing else but that Swarm of Courtiers who are about the Pope's person to advance their fortunes and thrust themselves into Church-Dignities and the person of Popes consider'd not as Popes but as Men who being as obnoxious as others to their Ambition and other humane passions suffer themselves to be often transported by the adulation of their Courtiers to attribute to themselves without reason Rights and Prerogatives which God never gave them and that are equally prejudicial to the Sovereignty of Kings the repose of the People the tranquillity of the Church the good of the Catholick Religion and in fine to the true
to Excommunicate or deprive them of their Kingdoms What occasion had Iean d' Albret given that for all this was despoil'd of his Estate Really one cannot offer a greater injury either to the Church or Pope himself then this attributing of so odious a power to him And the Church will have reason to say to these preposterous defenders of her Interests as Iacob said to his Children Simeon and Levi upon the Sack of Sichem Turbâstis me odiosam fecistis me Chananaeis Pherezaeis habitatoribus terrae hujus You have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the Land Besides in celebrating the first Advent of the Son of God himself she testifies that all the Kings of the Earth and even the most fierce of Tyrants had no reason to have been jealous of the coming of this new King for that he who gives to his the Kingdom of Heaven ravishes not from Princes the Kingdoms of the Earth Non eripit mortalia Qui Regna dat coelestia But our Popes take it for an honour done them when men attribute to them praises quite contrary to what the Church gives Iesus Christ and Kings are in danger of their Empires since they can take from Princes both their States and Kingdoms But doubtless when they shall have consider'd how unfortunate these pretences have prov'd to them and how odious they still are they will easily themselves acknowledge the truth of these excellent words which the Advocate general Mons. du Mesnil has in those Memoirs of his upon the procedures of Rome against the Queen of Navarre inserted amongst the Liberties of the Gallican Church Whilest the Popes of Rome pursu'd the footsteps of Charity and Christian Humility confining their power to the Spiritual Government establish'd by God in his Gospel without arrogating to themselves a magisterial temporal or worldly Dominion so long they received universal reverence and sincere obedience from all men But no sooner did they or any of them exalt themselves by assuming an Authority not onely as Peers but Superiours to Kings but they became in danger of losing their own Authority and that too which they would have usurped from others and have created trouble both to the Kingdom of God and of his Church Certainly those Popes who shall but consider these Christian and pious Reasons will never suffer themselves to be surpris'd with the Flatteries of those about them and will understand that 't is not the Interest of the Holy See which these Sycophants look after but their particular profit Nor do they alwaies dissemble their low and unworthy pretences nor are they afraid sometimes to sooth the Pope as one would do the Turk or great Mogul by those profusions of mony which he spends on his Courtiers Let the Italians saies that Italian Carrerius lift up their heads above all Nations of the Earth for that singular grace and favour which God has done them in bestowing on them a spiritual Prince namely the Bishop of Rome who has chased great Kings and mighty Emperours from their Thrones to set others in their places to whom so many potent Kingdoms pay'd tribute so long as never any thing has been seen like it and who divides such riches amongst those of his Court as never any King or Emperour hath done before But these so lofty Elogies in the eyes of these base and interested spirits appear but Sacrilegious to those who truely honour the grandeur of the Spiritual Authority of the Pope It is the very same in the matter of Infallibility the politick Theologues thinking to procure a great advantage to the Pope by publishing this Doctrine never considering that on one side they put a very great obstacle to the re-uniting of Hereticks who are more scandaliz'd with this pretension then with all those Points of our Faith in which we disagree and on the other that by this Doctrine they make the Pope in danger to deceive himself and expose the Church to Schisms and Divisions For 't is this pretence of Infallibility which may induce Popes to neglect to take the legitimate and ordinary waies of deciding Points of Faith who by the consent even of Cardinal Bellarmine himself ought to assemble Councils and there onely regularly examine Controversies of Religion which they will hardly ever be brought to doe so long as they are persuaded that they are Infallible without obligation to any other forms Nor let them alledge how great an advantage it is the having an infallible Authority in the Church to which there is so easie an access as if the verity of things depended upon their commodiousness Were this so we must also conclude that Popes are impeccable too at least in the Government of the Church for who would question but that were likewise very commodious for hindring the Damnation of so many persons by these unlawful Dispensations which persuade them that what-ever the Pope permits is as truely lawful as if God himself had said it whereas really there is nothing more true then what an Ancient has affirm'd namely That the greatest part of Dispensations are nothing else but a more easie descent into Hell with the Pope's permission Facilis descensus ad inferos cum bona venia Papae But as this Impeccability would be exceedingly advantagious if indeed God had bestow'd it upon Popes so on the contrary there can nothing be more pernicious then the Flattery of those who goe about to attribute it to him since it the more imboldens them blindly to pursue their own Passions without fearing to offend God And this is what those Cardinals and Prelates chosen by Paul the III d for the Reformation of the Church affirm'd really to have succeeded by means of some Persons who would needs persuade some Popes that their Wills were a sufficient Rule for their Actions whence it follow'd that what they pleas'd was lawful and hence say they have as from a source and spring flow'd such an infinity of abuses and intestine maladies as have reduc'd the Church to such a condition as her recovery seems in a manner to be desperate We may affirm the same of Infallibility It would be an extraordinary Priviledge but the Scripture having assur'd us that Every man is a Lier unless some Authority not inferiour to it have exempted us from that Rule 't is a great unhappiness to believe one's self Infallible because there is nothing that we are more propense to then the falling into Errour by presuming we cannot erre And on the other side it may truly be said that the likeliest means of rendring Popes infallible were to persuade them that they are not so to the end a holy fear may alwaies preserve them in an humble and salutary diffidence of their own sense and incline them to a diligent research of those waies and expedients which God has established to assure them of his divine Truths Paris the 1. of February 1662. FINIS An ADVERTISEMENT upon the following
and solid grandeur of the holy See it self In this sense it is we shall speak of the Court of Rome in the present Treatise as so many great persons and Saints have already done by opposing themselves to their unjust pretensions without at all thinking they did thereby in the least violate the respect which they ow'd the Pope as Head of the Church to which they on the contrary believ'd these Opinions must needs be most disadvantageous And we have so much the more liberty to doe it now since the moderation of the present Incumbent speaks him very far from these ambitious thoughts Now amongst all these illegitimate Usurpations of the Court of Rome thus considered there has none of them proved more funest to Christian Princes the Church and even to Popes themselves then that by which some of them have been transported to domineer over Kings to make themselves their Superiours and Judges in the administration of their Kingdoms and by pretending of a right when they fansied it for the cause of Religion to depose them of their Empires and give their Estates to others or to abandon them to the first Usurper who had power to make himself Master It 's impossible to describe those horrid Confusions which this pretence of theirs hath brought forth in Italy and in Germany for so many Ages together the Warrs it has kindled the Bloud it has made to be spilt the Provinces it has rendred desolate the Cities it has ruin'd the Scandals and Disorders which it has filled the Church with But one of its worst effects is that it has render'd the holy See which should as well be the centre of the love of Catholicks as of the Unity of the Church odious both to Kings and People by making them to look upon the Vicar of Iesus Christ not as a common Father full of tenderness for all his Children but as a Temporal Prince that would trample all other Princes under his feet and render himself absolute Master of all the Kingdomes of the Earth This is one of the main causes which has made so many people revolt against the Church of Rome and the most usual pretence which they have taken to hinder many Christians from paying that observance to Popes which they are oblig'd to render them by confounding it with these odious excuses For having once anticipated the People with this erroneous opinion That one could not acknowledge in the Pope that real Authority which Iesus Christ has given him without owning that also which these Sycophants attribute to him over Temporals and States they have by an hateful Schism kept them from acknowledging the Pope as Head of the Church for fear lest they should be bound likewise to own him for their King and Master It concerns the Church therefore to take away this color from Schism which is the greatest of all mischiefs by separating the Spiritual power of the Sovereign Bishop as it has been instituted by Iesus Christ and acknowledg'd by all Catholicks from this false and exorbitant power which Ambition and Flattery would adde to it repugnant to the spirit of Iesus Christ and the Doctrine of the Apostles And therefore we must needs confess that the Zeal of the Parliaments of France for the maintenance of the Sovereignty of Kings against the enterprises of those who subverting the Order of God would have it to depend upon this Spiritual Jurisdiction is no less advantageous to the Church then to the State and that on the other part there is nothing more prejudicial to them both then that low and fleshly prudence of these Theologues who think to exalt the divine Grandeur of the prime Minister of the new Law which wholly consists in the love to eternal good things and in the despising of the things of this World by secular and temporal advantages which God did never annex to him or that seek to enlarge their fortunes by this pretended Zeal for the enlargement of the Authority of the Pope 'T is known to the whole World that the Iesuites have within these hundred years been the chief defenders of these ambitious pretences and that their Society has employ'd the most renown'd of its Writers to disseminate this Doctrine every-where It is this which has been taught by Iohn Mariana Gregorie de Valentia Alphonsus Salmeron Ludovicus Richome Louys Molina Robert Bellarmine Iohannes Osorius Carolus Scribanius Andrew Eudemon Iohannes Azor Robert Parsons Francis Suarez Gabriel Vasquez Leonardus Lessius Iacobus Gretserus Martinus Becanus Antonius Santarellus Vincentius Filiutius Stephen Bauny c. On the contrary it is well known what extraordinary care the Parliaments of Paris and the Universities of France have taken to repress the Authors of these pernicious Opinions the one by their Arrests and the other by their Censures It 's above an hundred years since that the Parliament of Paris gave a famous Arrest upon this Subject the 4 of December 1561. against a certain Bachelour in Divinity who had put it into his Thesis That it was in the Power of the Pope to excommunicate Kings to give away their Kingdoms and to absolve their Subjects of their Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity This Proposition was declar'd seditious the Bachelour being not to be found it was order'd that the Bedel of the Sorbon vested in a red Hood should disavow it before a President of the Court and the chief of the Faculty of Divinity and that during four years space there should no publick Disputation be permitted in the College where it was defended This whole affair is twice told us in the Bibliothec du Droit under the words Interdictions p. 4478. and Effigies p. 1110. And Bouchel who is the Author of this Bibliotheca in reciting of this History adds this Remark The plain truth is that within these fifty years past there is come a certain new Sect to be planted amongst us called by the name of Jesuites who maintain Propositions quite contrary to ours to the very ruine of the State The same Parliament testifies its zeal for the Interests of the King and Crown upon several other occasions as when it condemn'd to the fire the 8 of Iune 1610. the Book of the Iesuite Mariana intituled De Rege Regis institutione and that after the same manner Iū 26. 1614. it treated that of Suarez intitul'd Defensio Fidei Catholicae But there was never any thing more celebrious upon this subject then that which pass'd 1626. in the censure of Santarel This Iesuite had written a Book of Heresie Schism Apostasie c. printed at Rome 1625. permissu superiorum in which following the common sentiments of his Society he taught That the Pope might punish Kings and Princes with temporal pains depose and deprive them of their Kingdoms and States for the crime of Heresie and for other causes as when they were culpable of any fault if he find