consequence for all than for one 9. In fine it will also follow from thence that our Fathers were bound upon that pretence of the Latin Church to examine all the Points of that Religion For firmly to assure themselves of the Truth of that Priviledge it was not enough to consider it in its Grounds and its Causes which are those Proofs that they call a Priori they ought further to look on it in its effects that is to say to see it in the Doctrines of that Church in its Maxims in its Voice and diligently to take notice whether they may see all the Characters of Infallibility resplendent in it or whether they may not discover some Error It was after this manner that the Disciples of Jesus Christ acknowledged and cleaved to him I have given unto them says he the words which thou gavest me and they have received them and have known surely that I came out from thee To whom should we go Said they to him Thou hast the words of Eternal Life Our Fathers had so much the more reason to use theirs also when all the prejudices of Corruption which we have taken notice of in the foregoing Chapters presented themselves to their sight They observed there all the Characters of humane Weakness of Ambition Covetousness Interest Negligence of plotting Contrivances and of the Spirit of the World and all the other marks of Fallible men who can then blame them for holding so circumspect a course to come to the full and clear knowledge of the Truth So that that pretence of Infallibility was so far from driving our Fathers from the examining of those Doctrines which were taught in their days that the very same thing necessarily engaged and led them to it CHAP. VI. An Examination of the proofs which they produce to establish the Infalliblity of the Church of Rome LEt us see nevertheless upon what Foundations that pretended Prerogative of the Latin Church is built They produce on this Subject some passages of Scripture and some Arguments But as to the Passages of Scripture it is evident that there is not any one which respects more peculiarly the Latin Church then the Greek the Aegyptian the Aethiopian and others every one of which has as much reason to apply them to themselves as the Latin Yet we do not here dispute about a favour common to all Christian Societies but about a peculiar prerogative pretended to by the Latins For they are all agreed that all other Societies have err'd notwithstanding all those passages They ought then necessarily to alleadge something which belongs to the Latins peculiarly exclusively from all others or they ought to come to an acknowledgment that those passages do not at all establish the Infallibility of a visible Church since if they did so establish it being so general as they are they would have the same cogency in favour of the Greeks the Armenians and the Jacobites as well as the Latins 1. In effect one sort of those passages respect the true Church of Jesus Christ that is to say not that multitude of men who make profession of Christianity or who live in the same external Society of Religion but the truly faithful those holy men whom God has inwardly regenerated by his Spirit and whom he leads to life everlasting It is of that Church that it is said That she is the body of Jesus Christ That there is one Body and one Spirit That Jesus Christ is her head That she is his spouse It is only of the truly Faithful and no otherwise that these promises are verifi'd Vpon this Rock will I build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it I will be with you always unto the end of the World I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter who shall abide with you for ever The Spirit of Truth shall lead you into all Truth where two or three are gathered together in my Name I will be there in the midst of them These passages denote nothing less then an Infallibility either in the whole Body of the Visible Church or in the side that is strongest or in Councils or in the Decisions of Popes or in Traditions and Ancient Customs but they only signify that God will have always some truly Faithful upon the Earth even unto the end of the World and that he will accompany them with such a measure of the light and grace of his Spirit as shall in the end bring them to the Glory of his Kingdom 2. There are others which they yet make use of far less to the purpose because they signify only the Duty of Pastors and what they are appointed to do and not that that in effect they shall do Such as these Go Teach all Nations Baptising them in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost Son of man I have set thee for a Watch-man over the House of Israel The Priests lips shall keep knowledge and they shall seek the Law at his Mouth I have set watch-men upon thy walls O Jerusalem which shall never hold their peace day nor night And he gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastours and Teachers For the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministery for the edifying of the Body of Christ These and some other like passages shew to what the Offices of the Ministry are naturally appointed and the Obligation of those that are called to it but they are very far from giving from thence a Prerogative of Infallibility 3. They alledge also some passages that recommend to the Faithful the having a respect for and an Obedience to their Pastors Such are these He that heareth you heareth me and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me Obey them that have the rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses seat All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe that observe and do but do not ye after their works But I cannot see what this last passage should let us see but that all those Exhortations that God makes to the Faithful to have a submission to the word of their Pastours denote very truly the Duty of the people in that matter but they do not in the least settle any Infallibility in their Pastours For is this that that Jesus Christ would say That the Scribes and Pharisees as long as they sat in the Chair of Moses were Infallible he that on the contrary accus'd them of having made void the Commandments of God by their Traditions and who elsewhere gave his Disciples such a Charge to take heed of the leaven of the Pharisees that is to say of their pernicious Doctrines How many times is that Obedience that Respect and that Submission recommended to Children to give to their Fathers in the Scriptures Is it that the Scripture in that ascribes to their
efficacy But if they may see their Ministry to become so corrupted that their is an eminent danger of loosing their Salvation who can doubt that they ought not to be lookt on only as the Enemies of God and the Church rather then the Ministers and their Pastors and that they should not fail to take heed of them and their Doctrine as pernitious leaven in stead of blindly following them The Duties are then reciprocal between the Pastors and the People The Pastors ought to guide their Flock well to give them good pasture and the people owe them Respect Obedience Teachableness and Love on supposition that the Pastors well acquit themselves of their duty those who are under them will become guilty before God and Men of the Crimes of Rebellion Profaneness and Ingratitude if they do not acquit themselves of theirs But if the Pastors abuse their charges if they overturn the Gospel or if they do any thing coming near to it if they abuse their Titles their Sees their Dignities their Sacerdotal Ornaments all that will signify nothing they owe them no more in that regard either that Respect or that Obedience The Reason is manifest because they ought to respect nothing but the cause of God and upon the Consideration of its saving Truth when then they may see that they withdraw themselves from God and that Truth that respect also which ought to be given to God and his Truth should be withdrawn from them And as to what they say that private men would become Judges of their Pastors where of right those Pastors ought to Judge of Controversies who are above private men this is nothing but a playing with words How many of our Judges are there who Judge us every day without our finding any inconvenience or ill in it They Judge us with a Judgment of Indictment which is a publick Judgment and they Judge us with a Judgment of Distinction which is a private Judgment For they do not bind us blindly to believe that all that they declare is equitable because they so declare it we have in that respect a full liberty to examine those things as they are in themselves though we fail of always presuming in their favour But say they whatsoever liberty we have to examine their Judgments their Judgments must be executed notwithstanding when we our selves believe them unjust I confess it but it is because their Execution consists only in those things or in those external Actions which leave the thoughts of the mind always free and not in an inward acquiescence And this is that that puts a difference between their Sentences and the decisions of Pastors concerning the matters of Religion for the Execution of these latter consists in an acquiscence of the Soul and the Conscience which cannot but examine them in the end and be decided but by the knowledge we have of the Equity and Truth of those Doctrines The same thing may sometimes happen in the Civil Society where in stead of putting in Execution the Commands of Superiours one shall be bound formally to oppose and resist them as when the Sates of a Province or a Governour shall command things prejudicial to the Obedience that one owes to one's Soveraign and which would engage the people in a Rebellion Then we may not only Judge our Judges by a private Judgment but our private Judgment is a thousand times more general and publick then that of those Judges yea though it shall not be accompanied with any formality For those formalities signify nothing when the fidelity which we owe to our Prince is concerned Then neither respect of Magistrates nor consideration of Order nor the Authority of our Governours ought to turn us aside but they must all give place to that Great and Fundamental Duty It is the same thing in a Religious Society God and our Salvation are to be preferred before all things and if it fall out that the Pastors either in their Pulpits or in their Writings or in their Councils would plunge us into errors and into a worship that dishonours God and corrupts his Christian Religion we may not only judge them by a private judgment but we ought also at the same time to labour to make that private judgment to become publick and as general as it can be made and howsoever we do it we do not in any thing withdraw our selves from that fidelity which we all owe to God The Inconveniences that arise from that Conduct ought to be imputed not to private men who do but what they are obliged to do but to the Pastors who abuse their Charge and pervert the rule and natural design of their Ministry But say they Is not this to introduce a private spirit into the Church where we all ought to have but one same spirit which is that of the Church There is saith St. Paul but one Body and but one Spirit and therefore it is that he himself exhorts us to abide all in the same spirit and to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace I answer that there ought to be in the Church in effect but one and the same Spirit but that that ought to be the Spirit of God the Spirit of Truth the Spirit of Wisdom not the spirit of the World not the spirit of Errour God gives his holy Spirit immediatly to all his truly Faithful ones whether they be Pastors or whether they be Lay-men which is in all but one same Spirit though the measure according to which each receives may be different Grace says the Apostle is given unto every one of us according to the measure of the gift of Christ And in that Description of the State of the Church under the new Testament which is set down by the Prophet Joel God says That he will purer out his Spirit upon all flesh that their Sons and their Daughtes shall Prophecy and that he will give this Spirit to his Servants and to his Handmaids Elsewhere God promises his Children That he will give them a new heart and a new spirit and that he will put his Spirit within them Saint Paul teaches the same thing By one Spirit says he we are all Baptized into one Body whether we be Jews or Gentiles whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one spirit Because ye are Children says he to the Galatians God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts and in the Epistle which he addresses to the Saints and Faithful of Ephesus he tells them That they were sealed with the holy Spirit of promise and desiring that they might receive a more abundant measure of it he prayed God to give them the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation St. Peter tells the faithful of his age who were persecuted for the name of Jesus Christ That the Spirit of Glory and the Spirit of God rested upon them In fine the
whole Scripture is full of this Doctrine that the Spirit of God is immediately given to every Believer even down to that place where St. John tells them That they had an Vnction from the Holy Spirit and that they knew all things that the anointing which they had received of Jesus Christ abode in them and that they needed not that any man should teach them but that that anointing taught them all things From whence these two Truths result the one That every faithful one in particular has Fellowship with the Holy Spirit which animates and governs him immediatly and the other That that Spirit is not a meer Spirit of Docility and resting in what is taught them to make the Faithful receive the words of their Pastors but a Spirit of discerning which makes them capable of knowing things by themselves and to judge of them For this is that St. Paul means by that Spirit of Wisdom and of Revelation and St. John by that Vnction which teaches all things and frees us from the necessity of being taught by men that is to say of depending absolutely on their Authority as those men would do who should not be capable of discerning by themselves and there is this thing very considerable in that Discourse of St. John that he makes the subjects of it those false Teachers who laboured to seduce the Faithful I have says he wrote these things concerning those who seduce you But the anointing which you have received abideth in you and you have no need that any man should teach you c. Which lets us plainly see that he meant that that Unction was sufficient to secure them from that Seducing and by Consequence to make them discern by themselves the true from the false As to all the rest they do but mock when they call that Spirit a private Spirit under a pretence that it is given to each Believer for it is the same Spirit that animates the whole Mystical Body of our Saviour that Regenerates and Sanctifies them it is in one word the Spirit of the whole Church It may with far greater reason be said that they introduce a private Spirit who restrain to the Pastors alone the right of discerning the good from the bad and who would not that any Laymen should interpose For if the whole body be animated but by one only and the same Spirit why should not all the Faithful have the same right with the Pastors since they all partake of one same Light though in a different measure In fine if they would have it that to yield to every one a right to examine the matters of Religion would be to bring in a private Spirit let them tell us by what Spirit they would have one examine the question of the Church by what Spirit they would have every one know and rest assured that the Latin Church is the True Church of Jesus Christ by what Spirit they would have the Faithful chuse that side where they should refer themselves to their Pastors for in all those points they cannot deny that men ought to follow their own light since they cannot in the least make those judgments by the Eyes of their Prelates as we have noted before Behold then that private Spirit since it pleases these Gentlemen to call it so which they themselves are constrained to admit which shews us the nullity of that inconveence that they would pretend to remedy We ought then to go higher yet and to examine that great Argument which the Author of those Prejudices has chose above all others as being alone sufficient to make us acknowledge the necessity of referring ones self blindly to the Church It consists in letting us know That all the men in the world may deceive themselves that the darkness of our Vnderstandings our Prejudices and our Passions engage us to that And if M. Claude says he can propose evident falshoods as proofs of the highest certainty who can assure us that we are not in the number of those who deceive themselves and make an ill choice in the matters of Religion and that the persuasion that we have well chosen is not any effect of our Prejudices and our Passions and other secret obstinacy in our Opinions from whence he concludes that it must be a thing to be despaired of ever to be able to distinguish the true Religion amidst so many Sects who all lay claim to it or to chuse among so many Opinions which they propose as Authorised by the Scripture those which one ought to believe from those that one ought to reject unless that same impotence that lies upon us to discern the Truth by our own light and which would not open a way to find it should make us go from the way of Reason wherein we should see nothing but uncertainty to that of Authority which would draw us out of that confusion and in the end he advertises us that that Authority is that of the Catholick Church that is to say the Latin Prelates We see then that thanks to the Philosophy of this Author all must be good Pyrrhonists to become good Catholicks we ought to doubt of every thing if we would be assured of any thing But to speak what appears to me that Argument cannot make any impression on the mind because it destroys it self as usually those false subtilties do For if we cannot be assured in those judgments that we make by our own Light because that may deceive us who can assure us that that Authors Argument will be good and concluding since we cannot judg of it but by that same Light which will not give according to him any certainty If the use of our Reason produces nothing but doubts why would he yet give us a Reason the Consequence whereof can be no other than doubtful and by which he cannot also gain any thing over us It may be it is good it may be it is not so our Light deceives us in other things it may very well deceive us in that What likelyhood then is there that we should be persuaded by an Argument that combates it self and which takes away from it self the force of persuading Moreover That Argument destroys the design of the Author of those Prejudices and overthrows the Cause it would Establish For if there be no certainty in the judgments that we make by our own Light who shall secure us that we do not deceive our selves in chusing the way of Authority since we cannot make choice of that but by that same Light which is says he so deceitful We cannot less fear in that very thing the obscurity of our Understandings our Prejudices and Passions the inclination that we have to Error and who shall assure that Author who shall assure us our selves that that persuasion where it is and which he would communicate to us is not an effect of his Prejudices of his Passions or of some obstinacy in his Opinions Who shall warrant
as their words should be found confirmed by proofs drawn from the Scripture They have said that they did not care for the Testimony of men but that they would confirm what they said by the Voice of God which was more certain then all Demonstrations or to say better the only Demonstration It is Evident therefore that our Fathers could not take any other Rule of the Faith or Principle of the Reformation then the Holy Scripture In effect the Scripture is the Word of God the Law of our Soveraign Lord according to which we must all be Judged Pastors and People great and small Learned and Ignorant It contains the Foundations of Divine Revelation without which there is neither Faith nor a good Conscience nor peace of mind nor hope of Salvation and if they would consider these things a little more carefully then they ordinarily do I am perswaded they would make no Difference with us about this Article All Christians are agreed that the Word of God is the only source of all the Mysteries that are necessary to our belief in Order to our Salvation and that his will is the only Rule of our Worship This is a Maxim about which there is no dispute between us and those of the Church of Rome for they know with us that Faith comes out of the Word of God and that it is in vain to Honour God when we follow the Commandments of men All our difference consists but in the knowing where that word and that will is we restrain it to the Scripture our Adversaries extend it further for they would have it to be found in Traditions in the writings of the Fathers in the decisions of the Popes in the Determinations of the Councils and in all that which they call the belief of the Church not only while those things are conformable to the Scripture but also while they are besides the Scriptures But as for the decisions of the Popes and Councils our Adversaries themselves consess that God gives them not any new and immediate Revelation that discovers new Objects of Faith to them or new ways of Worship and that since Jesus Christ and his Apostles God has not given the like Revelations to men either in these latter or the proceeding Ages It is certain says Monsieur du Val his words being set down by Monsieur Arnaud in his second Letter That the Holy Ghost does not assist the Pope in the decisions of points of Faith by an immediate and express illumination as well because that Illumination would be miraculous and that there would be no necessity of establishing such a Miracle as because that no Pope ever attempted to prove that when he would decide any matter he should be immediately and expresly inlightned by the Holy Spirit A Council also adds he has not the like illumination or ever had And if ever any had had it it would have been without doubt the first of all which the Apostles held at Jerusalem at a time wherein the Holy Ghost visibly descended upon the Faithful And yet notwithstanding the Apostles in that Council did not determine any point of difference about the Legal Ceremonies by an express and immediate illumination but after a long debate and discussion It is therefore an unquestionable Truth that there is no new and immediate Revelation in the Church and that Revelation ceased in Jesus Christ and his Apostles From whence it evidently follows that all that is to be found either in the decisions of the Popes or in the Definitions of the Councils or in the Writings of the Fathers or the belief of the Church or in that which they call Tradition or in a word in all that proceeds from the Mouth and hands of men whatsoever Denomination they may pass under is the word of God but as far as it may be found conformable to that Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles But that being so as it is without any difficulty how can they be certain of that Conformity but as they refer to and compare things with the Scripture They say that there are certain Articles of that Revelation which the Apostles have delivered down in Trust from their own living voice alone to their Successors and which from hand to hand have came down to us But besides that that very thing is a matter of History about which we cannot have any certainty of Faith and upon which by Consequence we can build nothing firmly what certain sign can they give us to know those pretended Apostolical Traditions by or to discern the True by when they should be mingled with the false From the first Rise of Christianity Hereticks would say as may be seen in Saint Irenaeus to gain credit to their Errors that they had were the secret Mysteries which the Apostles taught not to all in Common but to the perfect in particular Papias himself as Eusebius Testifies had made a Collection of Tables and New Doctrines under the Title of unwritten Traditions which he had Learned from the Mouths of those who had seen the Apostles and conversed familiarly with them Saint Irenaeus speaks of a certain Tradition which had passed for currant in his Time in Asia as immediately coming from the Apostle Saint John to wit That Jesus Christ Taught after his Fortieth Year which is notwithstanding now held to be false by all Chronologers They do not not hold the Opinion of the Mâ—llenaries to be less false which divers Antient Fathers have approved and maintained as a Tradition proceeding from the Apostles The Churches of Asia who have the Feast of Easter Celebrated precisely on the Fourteenth Day of the Moons Age after the Vernal Equinox boast for that purpose of the Tradition of Saint John and Saint Philip and the rest of the Church hold on the contrary by Apostolical Tradition that it ought to be Celebrated on the Sunday of our Lord's Resurrection The Greeks Nestorians Abassines Latins Armenians have their contrary Traditions for Tradition changes its Face and Form according as the Nation changes one sort hold for a Tradition the necessity of three immersions in Baptism and that of the use of Leavened bread in the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the other mock at it and reject it The one sort believe a Purgatory by Tradition the others believe it not The one by Tradition Circumcise their Children the others have that practise in horrour as being a Relique of Judaism The one sort fast by Tradition upon the Saturday the rest have that fasting in Execration One sort by Tradition Sacrifice Lambs at this day after the manner of the Jews the rest detest that custom Who can say Justly in so great a Confusion which this is Apostolical and this is not so Moreover there are a great many Antient Traditions which publick use heretofore Authorised and which Time has so abolished that there remains not the least shadow of them among the Latins as that of not Baptizing
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 that of other Bishops Since the Popes were raised to that high Dignity wherein we behold them at this day each Nation has thought that it ought in some manner to participate in their Nomination because the business was about one common interest they would have the Protectors of their Interests in the Colledge of Cardinals and Princes themselves have interpos'd but they can see nothing like that in the Primitive Church Rome alone made her Bishops without the participation of other Churches 2. Victor Bishop of Rome having excommunicated the Churches of Asia who celebrated the Feast of Easter after the manner of the Jews S. Irenaeus with the Bishops of France opposed themselves to that Excommunication and wrote as well to Victor as to the other Bishops and in effect those Churches of Asia did not cease to remain in the Communion of the Catholick Church notwithstanding that action of Victor as it appears from the Testimony of Socrates who formally sayes that those who contended about the business of Easter did not nevertheless refuse communion with one another So that their Bishops were called and received in the Council of Nice without any difficulty for Eusebius notes expresly among those who were called by Constantine the Syrians the Cilicians and the Mesopotamians who were Quartodecumani he sayes that Constantine would conferr pleasantly and familiarly with the Bishops about matters that were in question and that he would bring them all by that means to the same opinion even about the matter of Easter and S. Athanasius testifies that it was to accord that difference that all the World was assembled at the Council of Nice and that the Syrians came to the same opinion with the rest and that they earnestly contended against the Heresie of Arius which shews us that they assisted at the Council without any notice being taken of Victor's Excommunication From whence it is no very hard matter to conclude what Aeneas Sylvius Cardinal of Sienna and afterwards Pope has acknowledged in one of his Letters That before the Council of Nice every one lived according to his own wayes and that men had but a very small regard to the Church of Rome 3. In the sixth Century a great trouble being raised in the Church upon the occasion of three Writings the one of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus the other of Ibas Bishop of Edessa and the third of Theodoret of Mopsuesta which had been read and approved in the Council of Chalcedon but whom the most judged to be Heretical Pope Vigilius openly took up the desence of those three Writings and vigorously oppos'd himself to the condemnation that the Emperour Justinian and the Eastern Patriarchs had made of them But in the end being drawn to Constantinople he changed his opinion and consented to that condemnation whither he was carried out to it by the complaisance which he had for the Emperour who had a great affection for that business or whether out of some other principle Howsoever it were that action appear'd so criminal in the eyes of a great number of Orthodox Bishops that they separated themselves and their Churches from the Communion of Vigilius and his Party and even the Church of Africa assembled in Council as Victor of Tunis an African Bishop witnesses who lived in those times Synodically excommunicated that Pope leaving him notwithstanding means to re-establish himself by repentance These Actions prove in my judgement very sufficiently that the faithful then did not look upon the Church of Rome as the Mistress of all others nor on the communion or dependance on its See as a thing absolutely necessary to the salvation of Christians There can nothing be said in effect more opposite to the Spirit of the Christian Religion than that Imagination God had heretofore fixed his Communion with that of the Israelites and established in Jerusalem and in its High Priests the center of Ecclesiastical Unity But when Jesus Christ brought his Gospel into the world he changed that order not by transporting the rights of Jerusalem to Rome nor those of the High Priests to the Popes but by abolishing wholly that necessity of Communion to a certain place and that particular dependance on a certain See This is what S. Paul clearly enough teaches in his third Chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians In the new man sayes he there is neither Greek nor Jew neither Circumcision nor Vncircumcision neither Barbarian or Scythian bond or free but Jesus Christ is all and in all He had had no reason to express himself after that manner if that new man whereof he spoke had necessarily been a Roman and depending on the Communion of the Bishop of Rome So also the same Apostle setting that Evangelical Church that Jesus Christ had assembled in opposition to the ancient and earthly Jerusalem makes not that opposition to consist in this that the one is Jerusalem and the other Rome the one the head City of Judaea and the other that of the Empire but he makes it to consist in this that one is earthly and the other heavenly the one below and the other on high the one ty'd to a certain place from whence it cannot go and the other independent on all manner of particular places in the world and having no necessary dependence on any but Heaven For it is to this purpose that he calls the Jerusalem that is above the heavenly Jerusalem the City of the living God the Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven It is in the view of that that Jesus Christ said to the Samaritan Woman believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth The Samaritans would establish the center of Religion on the Mountain where Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs had built an Altar to God the Jews on the contrary established it in the City of Jerusalem To all that Jesus Christ opposes not the Capital City as the new Mountain which he had chosen nor Rome as another Jerusalem but the Spirit and the Truth that is to say Faith and Piety alone abstracted from all those relations to particular places and independent on all Cities and Mountains The same thing is justified by the censure that S. Paul passed on the Corinthians in that one said I am of Paul another I am of Apollos and another I am of Cephas that is to say of Peter For we ought not to imagine that those men meant that they were so of Paul or of Apollos or of Peter as to be no more of Jesus Christ or that they would take Paul or Apollos or Cephas for heads equal to Jesus Christ They were Christians and they were not ignorant of the difference they were to make between Jesus Christ and his Apostles No without doubt they were not ignorant
the Form of her Government we cannot deny that in that respect she has not under-went divers changes I do not mention the Introduction of the Episcopal Order for that is a Question but I speak of those changes that have befel her through the Usurpations and Contests of the first See's and chiefly by the Usurpations of that of Rome which the greatest part of the World will own to have been very considerable Her Discipline and her Liturgies have also undergone many Changes and they cannot in that regard ascribe any Uniformity to the Church either in respect of Times or Places In fine she has sometimes beheld the Body of her Ordinary Pastors turned against her self she has seen a great part of her true Children scattered and dispersed here and there without being able to perform any Acts of an External Society and she has seen some of her Flocks deprived of their Pastors and forced to set up some among themselves in the room of those who had abandoned them For all that fell out in the days of the Arrians the Councils determined Heresy the greatest part of the Orthodox who opposed themselves to their Impiety were either banished or forced to fly into the Desarts and according to the Testimony of St. Epiphanius divers People who saw that their Bishops were turned Arrians in the Council of Seleucia looked on them as the miserable Desertors of their Ministry and set up themselves other Bishops The greatest part of those Changes that fall out in the Church come from two sources the one That she is mixed with the Worldly and Profane in the band of the same External Profession and the other That the Truly Faithful themselves who only are the Church of Jesus Christ as truly Faithful as they are fail not to have a great many other imperfections their knowledge is obscure their Righteousness is accompanied with its faults their Inclinations are not all right and even their most just Inclinations do not fail to have some farther irregularity These two Fountains produce an heap of evils and disorders the Worldly on their part bring thither Covetousness Ambition Pride Opinionativeness contempt of God his Mysteries and Worship Politick Designs Worldly Interests a Spirit of Grandeur Luxury Superstitions Heresies Love of Dominion Presumption Opinion of Infallibility Forgeries and all other Perversities of the heart of Man The Faithful they bring thither on their side their Ignorance their Negligence their Fearfulness their Simplicity and sometimes their Passions their Personal Interests and Vices From all which a Chaos is made up of darkness and Confusion a Mystery of Iniquity a Spiritual Babylon that perpetually makes war against the Church which reduces her sometimes into very strange Extreamities and which would without doubt destroy her if her Eternal Head did not keep her up above all I acknowledge that the Spirit of God fights against that Babylon on the Churches side and that he presides over that Chaos to expel those Confusions and to hinder the Churches Perishing But it must not be imagined under a pretence of that presence of the Spirit of God that there never happens any disorder in it He indeed always preserves the Essence of the Church but he frequently permits her State to be altered This is the Effect that that heap of Crimes Vices and Imperfections may produce which I have mentioned as well on the side of the Truly Faithful as on that of the Worldly They never go so far as to destroy her intirely but they go so far sometimes as to spoil her of her Ornaments of her External Advantages and even of her very Health if I may so speak and therefore Jesus Christ told his Disciples In the World you shall have Tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the World God has always preserved and he will preserve to the end of all Ages a Body of many persons united together in the Communion of his Son Jesus Christ This Body can never perish it can never cease to be nor lose any thing that is absolutely necessary to its subsistence but it may be deprived of its large Extent Temporal Splendor Worldly Glory Peace Rest and Visibility It may see its Ministry Corrupted in as much as it is in the hands of men it may see its External Worship dishonoured and Error and Superstition fill its Pulpits Possess its Schooles and diffuse it self over its Councils its true Members may be hindred from making external Assemblies and a Body of a Visible Communion and it may be abandoned by its Pastors and reduced to a Necessity of Creating others See here what the State of the Church is Upon all these Illustrations it will be no difficult matter to decide the Question concerning the Novelty and Antiquity of our Church For if we have made a Society essentially different from that which Jesus Christ and his Apostles formed at the first and which has all a long subsisted down from his Birth to this present if we cannot justly say That we are a Body of many Persons united together in the Communion of one only true God under one only Jesus Christ our Head and Mediatour if they can with any ground contest with us the Unity of the True Christian Faith Piety and Holiness in one word if we want any thing that is necessary to the Constitution of the Church and its subsistence or if there be any thing in us that hinders that that good which we have does not produce its effect to give us the Form and Nature of a True Church it is certain that we have made a new Church and by a Consequence a false and an Adulterous Church But if we can truly and justly glorify God for all that which makes up the Essence of a True Church if our Faith is sound if our Piety is pure if our Charity is sincere if we can upon good grounds maintain that God preserves and upholds in the External Communion of that Body which we compose the Truly Faithful and Just persons who only as I have said often are the Church it is certain also that there is nothing more unjust then that Accusation of a New Church which they charge us with There never was in the World any other Church of God then that of his truly just and Faithful Ones that Body only is in the Communion of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ that alone is intrusted with the Truth that alone is animated by the Holy Spirit that alone is God's Inheritance his People his Vine his enclosed Garden his House and Mystical Family as the Scripture calls it that alone in fine has all the Rights of the Ecclesiastical Society the Right of External Assemblies that of the Ministry Sacraments Government and Discipline Let the Author of the Prejudices and his Brethren stir themselves as much as they please let them animate one another let them cry out write Prejudices and invectives never so much against us let
them do all that they please we are firm and fixed upon two Principles against which we are sure they cannot do any thing The one That if our Communion Teaches the True Doctrine if it has the True Worship and the True Rules of Christian Sanctity to a degree sufficient for Salvation and if the Causes for which we separated our selves from the Church of Rome were Just God nourishes and preserves his True Faithful Ones in our Communion whatsoever mixture there may be of Worldly Wicked and Hypocrites in it The other That if God nourishes and preserves his truly Faithful in our Communion we are the True Church of God that which has a Right to be in a Society and to which all the other Rights that follow that of a Society belong of Assemblies Ministry Sacraments Government Discipline and by Consequence we are the Church which succeeds not only de Jure but de Facto the Church of the Apostles that of the Ages following and even that which was immediately before the Reformation These two Propositions are framed in clear and distinct Terms they have neither Ambiguity nor Equivocation but I hold also that they are of a certain and indisputable Truth For there neither is nor ever was there any other True Church then that of the Truly Faithful and there never will be any other The Holy Scripture sets down no other Reason will not suffer us to acknowledge any other The Fathers never owned any other This is the constant and evident Principle of Saint Augustine as may be seen in the Fourth Chapter of the Third Part and it is also the Principle of the other Fathers as may be Justified by almost an infinite Number of passages The Antient Catholick Church says Clemens of Alexandria is but one only Church which assembles in the Vnity of one only Faith by the will of one only God and the Ministry of one only Lord all those who are before Ordained that is to say whom God has predestinated to be Just having known them before the Foundation of the World Where is the place where Jesus Christ should dwell says Origen It is the Mountain of Ephraim which signifies a fruitful Mountain but where are those fruitful Mountains among us where Jesus Christ dwels They are those on whom the fruits of the Spirit Joy Peace Patience Charity and other vertues may be found They are those fruitful Mountains which bring forth fruit to Jesus Christ and which are eminent for knowledge and hope And a little after The Grace of the Holy Spirit has gone over to the People of the Gentile and their Antient Solemnities are come to us because we have with us the True High-Priest after the Order of Melchizedec True Sacrifices are offered up amongst us that is to say the Spiritual Sacrifices and it is among us that he builds with living Stones the Temple of God which is the Church of the living God And elsewhere The Church desires to be united to Jesus Christ but note that the Church is a Society of the Saints And further elsewhere explaining those words Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church The Church says he that God builds consists in all those who are perfect and are full of those words thoughts and actions that lead to blessedness and a little lower How ought we to understand those words The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it For that expression is ambiguous is it the Rock that he speaks of or if it be of the Church is it that the Rock and the Church are but one and the same thing This latter I believe to be True for the Gates of Hell prevail neither against the Rock upon which Jesus Christ has built his Church nor against the Church according to that which is said in the Proverbs That the way of the Serpent is not found upon the Rock If the Gates of Hell do prevail against any there is neither that Rock upon which Jesus Christ builds the Church nor the Church that Jesus Christ builds upon the Rock For that Rock is inaccessible to the Serpent and stronger then the Gates of Hell And as to the Church as it is the Building of Jesus Christ she can never let in the Gates of Hell against her those Gates may very well prevail against every man that is without the Church and separated from that Rock but never against the Church Jesus Christ says Saint Ambrose knows those that are his and as to those who do not belong to him he does not vouschafe even to know them And elsewhere God called his Tabernacle Bethlehem because the Church of the Righteous is his Tabernacle and there is a Mystery in it for Bethlehem is Situate upon the Sea of Galilee on the East side which signifies to us that every Soul that is worthy to be called the Temple of God or the Church may be built upon the waves of this World but can never be drowned it may be encountred but can never be overthrown because it represses and calms the wild impetuousness of sufferings It looks upon the Shipwraecks of others while it self is safe from danger always ready to receive the illumination of Jesus Christ and to rejoyce under his Rays And further elsewhere he says Expresly That as the Saints are the Members of Jesus Christ so the wicked are the Members of the Devil Saint Hierome Teaches the same thing The Church says he which is the Assembly of all the Saints is called in the Scripture the Pillar and ground of Truth because she has in Jesus Christ an eternal firmness And in the Exposition of the Song of Songs he lays down this Maxim That the Church is the Assembly of all the Saints and that she is brought in speaking in the Canticles as if all the Saints were but one person And even the Author of the Commentary on the Psalms ascribed to Saint Hierome Explaining these words of the Prophet I will drive away from the City of the Lord all the workers of Iniquity The City of the Lord says he is the Church of the Saints the Congregation of the Just I do not deny that the Fathers sometimes give a very large extent to the Church when they consider it as mingled with almost an infinite number of the wicked and the Worldly as we have frequently explained it already and it is to this Idea that they refer their comparisons of a Field of the Air and the rest which we have often mentioned But it is certain That when the Question is to be decided which of the two Parties that make up that mixed Body is the Church that they unanimously agree to give that Title to the truly Faithful and to the Righteous only and that they deprive the wicked and the worldly of it and it is for this Reason that Saint Augustine always distinguishes in that extent of the mixt Church two People
one might make a large Volum of them if these Antient Disorders were not so publickly known One has publisht not long since a Book of the Rates of the Apostolick Chamber and the Taxes enjoyned for Penances which alone declares more then it will be necessary for us to stay upon for our Edification There not only every dispatch of business but every sin also every crime has its set Price and as there is nothing to be done without Money so there is nothing which Money cannot do 19. I could add to all that I have said a multitude of other things that could not but have been very proper to have raised those prejudices in the minds of our Fathers whereof we have spoken For those unjust ways which Rome has made use of to draw all affairs to it self with all the Riches of the West all the underhand Canvassings and strange Practices it has used in the Elections of Popes the Scandalous Schisms that have sprung from the Divisions of Parties and Differences of Elections The Bloody Wars that the Popes are accused to have divers times kindled among Christian Princes the Intrigues the dishonest ways whereby they are said to have served themselves to engage the Kings and Grandees of the World in their Interests the endeavours they have always used to elude the demands of a Reformation all these things sufficiently discover more of the Spirit of the World then of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and will easily perswade all those who are not wholly deprived of their Reason that there must needs have been latent at the bottom an extream Coruption But we ought to make an end of this Chapter and to leave a matter so ungrateful into which we had not at all entred if we had not been obliged by the necessity of a just defence as I have before declared It only remains that we shut up in the Close of all those things which we have represented by concluding that they cannot at least without renouncing all equity any more condemn our Fathers either of rashness or presumption if they durst perswade themselves that the Church and Religion were fallen into the very worst hands and if they judged from thence that they ought to enter upon a more particular scrutiny of those Doctrines that they taught and of those Laws whereby they would bind their Consciences That Consequence which they drew from thence was but the just effect of a Reason animated by the fear of God and a desire which they had of their own Salvation for what colour or pretence could there be that a Disorder in the Government of the Church so great so antient so general should not be accompanied with a multitude of other Errors contrary to the word of God and prejudicial to the Salvation of men CHAP. III. That the External State of that Religion it self had in the times of our Fathers signs of its Corruption sufficient to afford them just motives to Examine it ALthough these Reflections that I have already set down drawn from the Government of the Church were very weighty and by themselves capable of making the most just impressions on the Minds and Consciences of those who would set themselves to work out their own Salvation according to the Exhortation of the Apostle with fear and trembling yet we ought not to imagine that our Fathers were determined by those considerations alone They yet made others which they had that we may yet be more sensibly touched by them since they had for their object not the outward Form or State of the Ministry nor the persons who possessed the Offices and Dignities of the Church but their Religion it self in that State in which it was in their days For it is most true that it was scarce possible for those who did the least in the World fix their Eyes on that Religion to consider its Draught and its External Form without discovering or at least without discerning infinite Characters of its Corruption And this is that which I design to treat of in this Chapter 1. One of the chief Objects that presented it self to our Fathers was that of the great Number of Ceremonies with which they beheld that Religion either shrowded or overwhelmed It matters little which of the two we affirm for which way soever we take it it was always a true Pourtrait of the old Oeconomy of Moses which seem'd to be reviv'd in the World They took special notice of their external sacrifices their solemn Feasts distinction of Meats of their Altars of their Tapers of their sacred Vessels of their Censings of their set Fasts throughout the Year of their mystical Figures and a multitude of particular things altogether resembling those that were enjoin'd under the Law and in general a great Conformity to that Antient-Worship consisting in such a Love and Excessive usage of Ceremonies This was without doubt a Character very opposite to that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ where the Spirit Rules and not the Letter and which is made free from all that great cumbrance of External Observations St. Paul calls these Observances weak and beggerly Elements a Yoak of bondage the rudiments of the World the shadow of things to come whereof the body is Jesus Christ and St. Peter a Yoak which neither the Jews in his days nor their Fathers were able to bear Jesus Christ himself told the woman of Samaria That the time was come when the true worshippers of his Father should worship him in Spirit and in truth What likelyhood was there that they would have spoke after that manner if the Church of Christ her self should be burthened with as many or more Ceremonies then the Synagogue And if as Tertulian speaks God had not removed the difficulties of the Law to substitute in their places the easy Rules of the Gospel They would have Preached to us the Spirit and Liberty only to have us subjected again to the Letter and to have placed us under a servitude far more insupportable then the Former 2. Moreover as our Fathers saw one part of those Ceremonies taken from the Jews so they preceiv'd a multitude of others that were drawn from or imitated the Heathens by their approving of the same which they either Authorised or practised For we might put into this rank the use of holy water or water Consecrated for sprinkling in the entrance into Churches as well as private Houses and the Funerals of the dead the blessings and the sprinklings the using of Spittle in the Baptism of little Children the Invocation of Saints their Canonization their Patronages and ordering of their Charges and Imployments Their Images and Pictures their Agnus Dei's their Feasts for all the Saints for the deaths of St. John and many others their usage of Processions of Rogations their visiting the Shrines or Reliques of Saints of setting up the sign of the Cross where four ways met of Anniversaries for the dead of swearing by their Reliques and
Infallibility in the Parliament so neither can that of the Apostle do it for the Church for Societies do not always follow their natural appointments we see that they often enough depart from them I confess that the Church does not always wander from its end nor in all things yet it cannot also be imagin'd that she never departs For the wicked are mingled with the good in the same Society the Dignities of the Church are sometimes to be found more possessed by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful the very best men themselves are subject to weaknesses and they sometimes commit faults of that importance that may consequently be dilated by continuance and all that cannot but produce Errors and Corruptions which it will be most necessary to reform Behold all those passages of Scripture upon which they seem to me to found that pretension of the Infallibility of the Latin Church To them they joyn some Arguments 1. If say they it be possible for the Church to err why do we call it holy as we do in the Creed I believe the Holy Catholick Church Such an Assembly that is united in the profession of an error is so far unfit to be called Holy That on the contrary it is Impious since it agrees in a Doctrine that is contrary to the Holy Truths revealed by God I answer That if this Argument were good it would follow not only that the Church should be Infallible as to matters of Faith but also that she should be impeccable in respect of manners for she is called Holy as well from that Holiness that regards good works as from that which regards the Faith The Church is Holy but yet after an imperfect manner while she is here upon Earth and she will never be perfectly so but in Heaven Furthermore they ought to remember that the Title of Holy and generally all other Titles of Honour and Glory that are given to the Church belong to it in truth only in respect of the true Believers and not in respect of the Hypocrites and wicked which are mingled with the good in the same visible Society and that it is but only on the same account of the Good that all that visible Body is called the Church For they are none but those whom God has called to his Salvation who only can be the true mystical Body of Jesus Christ When then it shall come to pass that the number of the wicked prevails in that Visible Society they will fill up the Pulpits they will be Masters of Councils and of Decisions of Faith of the Government and Ministry of the Church and will not fail to introduce Errors and a false Worship but when those persons should introduce and authorise them the Church would not cease to be Holy not in respect of those wicked men who waste it and corrupt it as much as it lyes in their power to do but in regard of the Faithful whom God will keep pure by the illuminations of his Holy Spirit and the methods of his Providence The Church of Israel in the midst of its greatest Idolatries did not cease to keep the Titles of a Holy Nation and a Kingdom of Priests which Moses had given her but she kept them not in respect of her Corruptors and those wretched men that would have seduc't her but in respect of those that were Holy For it is certain that God has always done that which he did in the days of Elias where he reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed the Knee unto Baal and it is in those that the Church is preserv'd and always kept Holy 2. But yet further say they If the Church may err and particularly the Church Representative that is to say the Body of Pastors why do the Councils pronounce Anathema's against all those who shall not consent to their Decrees Would it not be very unjust to bind men under so great a penalty to consent to things that are uncertain and which may be false I answer that the force of the Anathema's of those Councils depends altogether on their Justice If those Councils have lawfully decided controversies according to the word of God and if with the Truth they have kept Love and Charity according to the Precept of the Apostle their Anathema is very efficacious and all that they bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven But if they have decided any thing against the Truth or against Charity if they have abused their Places their Anathema's are vain and rash and will fall upon none but their Heads who pronounce them For God has never submitted his Righteousness to the Unrighteousness of any Prelats All the force of those Thunderbolts depends on those very things which have been decided We can do nothing says the Apostle against the Truth We ought not then to imagine that those Anathema's must needs be Infallible we ought not also to believe that they could not be rightly used if they had not that Infallibility Saint Hilary did not pretend to be Infallible and yet nevertheless he pronounc'd an Anathema against Liberius who was a Deceiver Saint Paul did not pretend to make us Infallible and yet notwithstanding he commands us to Anathematise even an Angel from Heaven and himself if he should Preach any other Gospel then that which he has preached unto us Cyril of Alexandria did not aspire after Infallibility and yet he thunders out his Anathema's against all the Errours of Nestorius The second Council of Tours never thought of being Infallible and yet nevertheless it Anathematis'd all those who after the third admonition refus'd to restore the goods of the Church In fine every private Person pronounces an Anathema against all Heresies The Anathema's of the Councils are not the Sentences of the Magistrate the force of which depends on the Authority of him who pronounces them they are only the Denuntiations that men make on Gods side as his Interpreters and his Ministers of the severity of his Judgments against the Unbeleivers the Wicked and the Hereticks And provided that those Denuntiations should be founded on the word of God as far as the light of the Pastors of the Church and their good Consciences could perswade them we ought not to doubt but that they would be just altho' they would not be Infallible For howsoever it be that good and lawful Councils assembled in the Name of Jesus Christ would never pretend that their Anathema's should bind any person any farther then their Decisions and their Canons were just and conformable to the Scripture 3. They add yet if it were possible for the Church to err it were possible for it totally to fall away after that manner that there should not be any longer a Church upon the Earth and yet notwithstanding how many promises have we in the Scripture that denote the Perpetuity of the Church God says in Hosea That he would betroth her unto him for ever
Saint Paul calls her the Body of Jesus Christ But the Body of Jesus Christ is Eternal Jesus Christ promises to be with his even unto the end of the World and says that the Comforter shall abide with them for ever and that the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against his Church But it is no need of heaping up these Proofs of a thing which was never contested God will always keep a Church upon Earth that is to say he will always have a number of true Believers whom he will guide by his Word and by his Spirit and they are those that are betroth'd to him for ever and the Mystical Body of his Son to whom he will grant his gratious presence for ever and an assured Victory against the Gates of Hell There is nothing disputed in that point Our business is only to enquire whether all that Body composed of the good and the wicked that Assembly in which the worldly men and Hypocrites are mixt with the truly Faithful and that which they call the Visible Church can never fall into errour after what manner soever it be Whether it is not possible for that party of the men of the World which may be sometimes the stronger to corrupt the publick Ministry and for the same in respect of some errours and superstitions less Fundamental to infect the Good and to draw them tho' not so far from the Truth as to make them wholly lose the true Form of Piety and Communion with God for if that might happen the Church would be brought to nothing yet after such a manner as that their Faith and their Religion could not be said to be altogether pure But this experience justifies For in the Corruptions of the Church of Isral and in those times wherein they had introduc't the Worship of false Gods into the publick Ministry God had reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees to Baal and that which is most considerable is that that very Religion of those seven thousand was not pure for they liv'd in that Schism that Jeroboam made and no more went to render that Worship to God which they were bound to pay at Jerusalem but to Bethel It will signify nothing to them to say that the Church then subsisted in the Tribe of Judah for besides that that would not hinder any from seeing clearly by that example of those seven thousand that God can when he pleases preserve his own in a corrupted Communion and that yet the far greater number might fall into errour and that the publick Ministry might be contaminated it will not follow notwithsanding that that Church was wholly extinct which is only that which we say Besides that I say it is yet manifest that those two Churches that of Israel and that of Judah were often found to depart both together sometimes from the true Worship of God as it appears from that which Jeremiah says That God having given a Bill of Divorce to that of Israel for her Idolatries Judah her Sister feared not but that she also had turned aside from his true Worship It appears also by that which Ezekiel said that Samaria had not committed half the sins of Judah who had justifi'd her Sister in multiplying her Abominations The same History of the Kings of Israel and Judah teaches us concerning Joram the Son of Ahab King of Israel that he clave to the sins of Jeroboam by which he had made Israel to sin and that at the same time Joram the Son of Jehoshaphat and his Son Ahaziah Reigned in Judah and walked after the ways of the Kings of Israel in doing that which displeased the Lord. But without going so far is it not true that when Jesus Christ came into the World he did not find a pure Church upon Earth The Schismatical Samaritans had so confused a Religion that Jesus Christ did not scruple to say that Salvation was of the Jews The Jews on their side had defac'd their Religion by a thousand superstitions and by the false Doctrine of the Pharisees and in fine they had crucifi'd the Lord of Life the only Messoas they expected Notwithstanding which we ought not to believe that the Church was perished from the Earth and that God did not preserve his Children in the midst of those Confusions The same thing happened then when the Arrians had made themselves Masters of the Ministry of the Church and when under the Emperour Theodosius the younger the Eutichians prevailed in the second Council of Ephesus For it would be a very absurd thing to imagine that during the time of the Triumph of those Hereticks there were no more any true Believers in those Churches all whose Pulpits they had fill'd and none in all that Communion but those who obeyed the erronious Councils of Milan of Ariminum and of Ephesus At this very day the most zealous among those of the Church of Rome acknowledge that God saves many persons who live under the Schismatical Ministry of the Greeks and the Muscovites although besides that Schism they accuse them of holding a multitude of errours and superstitions For so Possevin sets it down in one of his Relations of Muscovy We ought not then to make the subsistance of the Church to depend absolutely on that Infallibility whereof we dispute We ought yet far less to abuse the promises of God by pretending under that pretext that they can never do that that is ill The true use of the promises is to encourage us to our Duty and in stead of making us presumptious they ought on the contrary to humble us and to shew us the horrour of our sins when it is contrary to that promise For so the Scripture makes use of it in the second Book of the Kings upon the subject of the Idolatries of Manasseh King of Judah for after having reckoned them over particularly it adds that he set up a graven Image of the Grove that he had made in the House of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his Son In this House and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the Tribes of Israel will I put my Name for ever See there the promise employed to its right use not to defend Manasseh in what he had done under a pretence that God had promised that his Name should never depart from the Temple which is the Language they speak in these days but to condemn Manasseh of that that as much as it lay in his power he had nullified that promise of God And so also it is that good men ought to speak to the Corrupters of Religion God has promised us that he would betroth his Church to himself for ever and you have laboured to break off that happy Marriage Jesus Christ has promised us that he will be always with us even unto the end of the world and you have endeavoured to deprive us of his presence He has promised us that his Holy
of the Prelats in the Latin Church TO defend in some manner a Principle that Scripture Reason the Interest of the Antient Jewish Church and the Christians do so loudly condemn they propound some Inconveniences which arise they pretend from that of the Contrary Principle But it is certain that if it were enough to alleadge those Inconveniences to overthrow those Rights which are found to be so solidly established there is nothing in the world sure since there is nothing so just so reasonable or so necessary which the weakness or the malice of men may not abuse It is necessary to yield to men the right of eating and drinking of Cloathing and Marrying themselves of selling and buying of holding Commerce between themselves of building Houses and Towns and to distinguish themselves by their several Arts and Professions And yet how many Inconveniences are there that arise from all those things It is the same in the usage of the most holy and inviolable things as of Religion it self of which a Libertine says in General because of the Abuses that were made of it Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum If all must be abolisht that is subject to Inconveniences one must abolish every thing Gold and Iron Night and Day Fire and Water would be criminal and the very Air it self which makes us live causes sometimes our death They cannot then take a worse way then that of those Inconveniences to cry down a Right founded upon Nature and upon Grace and Authorized by Jesus Christ by the Prophets and Apostles Let us see nevertheless of what nature those Inconveniencies are One of the most Considerable is That if they allow those who are subject to the Church to Examine the matters of Religion there will be no more any way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith that every one will have a Religion by himself and that by this means they should open a way for Extravagancies and Heresies and by consequence for the intire ruin of the Church since the minds of men are so different and confused that that which pleases one will not please another To Answer to that Objection I would demand of those Gentlemen whether they propose to themselves to find out any humane and efficacious way which shall go so far as actually and effectually to hinder those Extravagances and Heresies or whether they would only establish a Maxim which in supposing that it should be followed and that all men would receive it should contain all in the Unity of the Faith Let them take which of those two sides they please they cannot rationally say any thing The first contains a rash and absurd pretence for to go about to seek a humane means that shall actually hinder all Errors and Heresies is to seek for that which they can never be able to find To retain men in the Unity of the Faith and of True Piety two things are necessary the one That they teach all the pure Truths of God and the other That they give them all a right understanding to the end they should follow it Their Pastors might very well do the first but the second which does not depend on them none but God alone can do And that also he does in regard of all his Elect and truly Faithful for whose sake only there is a Church and Pastors in the World For he bestows on all those his Holy Spirit in that measure that shall suffice to unite them in the same Faith and to hinder them from falling into Errours wholly inconsistent with their Salvation As for the others as he has not ordained their Salvation so he would not actually hinder them from casting themselves into Heresies or into Errors On the contrary he has resolved to permit those strayings the better to distinguish them from his True Children There must be also saith St. Paul Heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you And elsewhere he says That God should send strong delusions to them that perish that they should believe a lye So that God who alone is Lord of the hearts and minds of men not having propounded that end to himself in establishing his Visible Church to hinder any Heresies from being in the World nor that they should not arise within that very Church it self but only that his Elect and truly Faithful ones should not be infected with them it is a great rashness for those men who cannot dispose hearts as he does to extend not only their desires but their pretensions also farther and to search out a way by which there should not be in effect any Heresie I confess that we ought to desire the destruction of all Heresies that we ought to labour for their Extirpation and that as the Elect and true Children of God are not distinctly known the cares that we should take for them ought to be extended indifferently to all But I say that we cannot make use of any thing for so great a work but those external means which are the pure Preaching of the Truth and Confuting the contrary Errors When their Pastors shall acquit themselves well in that duty they may rest assured that God will bless their conduct and their word not to all men but to the persons of his true Children If their Pastors would urge their pretensions from thence and would find a human expedient that might absolutely hinder those Heresies from touching them and from actually and effectually springing up as well among the good as the wicked I affirm that they would be wiser then God that they would encroach upon his rights that they would hunt for a Chimaera and that by that very means they would change the Ministry into a Tyranny for under that pretence of rooting out those Heresies they would come to be Soveraign Lords over mens Souls and Consciences which cannot nor ought to be suffered and which is so far from being a means to avoid them that it would fill the Church with Heresies If they say they intend only to establish a Maxim which supposing that it would be followed and that all men would receive it would contain all in the Unity of the Faith and that Maxim is That they ought to refer themselves absolutely to their Pastors I say in the first place That that Maxim is as proper to contain men in the Unity of Heresie and of Schism as in the Unity of Faith For the Hereticks and Schismaticks have their Church and their Pastors to whom they should absolutely refer themselves So that they could never discern whether they are in Unity of the Faith or in that of Error and wandring from the Truth if they were not before all things assured that they were in the true Church But who shall warrant us that when they would be so assured of the true Church that men would not divide themselves by different sentiments and that that which pleases one should not displease another What
Sienna told them that in the blindness wherein they were they placed their glory in that which was truly their shame and that on the contrary they held those things to be a reproach to them whereon their honour and Salvation did depend to wit in humbling themselves under their Head which was God Furthermore they have no love for any but sinners they despise the poor and howsoever the Canons forbid them they keep about their persons Pimps debauchers of Women Flatterers Buffoons Players where they should have had wise and holy men In fine instead of the Law of Truth the Law of Vanity is in the mouths of the Bishops and the lips of the Priests preserve knowledge but it is that of the World and not of the Spirit And a little after At present says he the State and Dignity of the Bishops may be known by their Earthly riches by their affairs and sordid cares of the World by their troublesome Wars and by their Temporal Dominion Alas the Lord Jesus said plainly that his Kingdom was not of this World he retired himself alone into a Mountain when he knew that they went about to make him a King How then is it that he who holds the place of Jesus Christ not only accepts Dominion but seeks it and that he whom Jesus Christ has taught to be meek and lowly in heart should reign in pleasures in luxury in violence in pride in haughtiness in riches and in rapines And yet a little after The Bishops have renounced Hospitality they neglect the poor of Jesus Christ but they make themselves fat and feed their Dogs and other Beasts as if with a formed design they would be in the number of those to whom Christ shall say I was poor and you relieved me not go ye cursed into Eternal fire For Generally almost all the Bishops lie under the evil of Covetousness they are ravishers of others goods and but ill despencers of the Churches turning aside to other uses that which they ought to employ in Divine uses or the feeding of the poor What Bishop is there adds he who does not more love to be a rich Lord and Honoured in the World then to help the poor The whole design of their lives is but for the things of the World They love to array themselves after the Fashion of that and as for the Ecclesiastical Ornaments whether they be Corporal or Spiritual they scarce make any account of them and therefore it was that S. Brigit said That the Bishops took the counsel of the Devil who said to them Behold those honours which I offer you the riches that are in my hand I dispence pleasures the delights of the World are sweet you must enjoy them That same Saint says further that the Covetousness of the Bishops is a bottomless Gulph and that their pride and their luxurious Lives was an unsavoury steam which made them abominable before the Angels of Heaven and before the Friends of God upon Earth As to the other Prelats and the Curats the same Author represents them to us after this manner In these Times says he there are very few Elections that are Cononically made and without under hand canvassings on the contrary the greatest parts of the Prelats and Beneficed men are made by Kings and Princes in an unlawful manner and which is more being brought in by Canvassings and Simony they are confirmed by the Popes against the Priviledges of the Churches and the Statutes of Germany and against all manner of Justice Furthermore the Bishops ordinarily promote to dignities and the Cure of Souls their Cooks their Collectors of their Tribute their Pensionaries the Grooms of their Stables Hence Ubertine said That the Antient Holiness of the Prelats wasted away by degrees and that it began to fall by Canvassings by Pomp and by Simony by unlawful Elections by Covetousness and by the abundance and superfluity of Temporal things by the promotions that the Bishops made of their Creatures by neglecting the Divine-worship and by other perverse works and that by Reason of those ill dispositions the Devil was let loose against the present State of the Church Now none of them who are called to the Pastors Charge and the Cure of Souls inform themselves either of the quality of their Flock or of their manners or their vices Not one Prelate called to the Government of a Monastery will take the pains to Observe either its Rules or the Order of its Ceremonies or the Discipline of the Religious there is not wholly any more mention made of the Salvation and Edification of those that are under them but they only inform themselves very exactly of the plenty of their Revenues and what such a Benefice may bring in Yearly though yet they do not reside there It is these Curates that Vincentius cri'd out upon when he said O what Obduration is there in the Church of God! The Prelats are Proud Vain Sumptuous Simonists Covetous Luxurious Men that regard only this Earth They neglect their Ecclesiastical Duties they are void of Charity Intemperate Lazy For they neither perform Divine Offices nor Preach and do nothing but what creates Scandal They despise the foresight of their Holy Mother the Church which ordains that when the Rectors of Churches shall not be able to Preach they should employ fit persons which should in their stead edify the people by their word and their Example and that they should supply them with all needful things But on the contrary the Prelats and Curates are only careful to put into their places men that are very well skilled not to feed the sheep but to poll them to destroy and flea them He goes on with that vehemency throughout a large Chapter where he relates the many complaints of the Abbot Joachim Saint Catherine of Sienna and of Saint Brigitt Behold this last among the others Those who Rule the Churches commit three sins the one is that they live a beastly and luxurious life the other that they have a Covetousness as insatiable as the Gulphs of the Sea and the third is That they are Prodigal to satisfy their own vanity as the Torrents that pour forth their waters impetuously such horrible sins which they commit ascend up to Heaven before the face of God and hinders the Intercession of Jesus Christ as the black Clouds disturb the purity of the Air The Revenues of the Church are given not to the Servants of God but to those of the Devil to the Debauchers of Women to Adulterers Gamesters Hunters Flatterers and such like men and hence also it is that the house of God is become Tributary to the Devil The Abbot who ought never to be out of his Monastery but to be the head and example to the rest of the Religious is become the head of a whole Troop of leud Women with their Trains of Bastards instead of being an Example to and feeder of the poor he makes himself Master
against the abuses of the Court of Rome as those of the rest of the Prelats Can they tell us what effect the complaints of Emperors of Kings of Princes and of the People produced who for so long a Time panted after a Reformation It is a hundred and fifty Years said Arnald du Ferrier the Ambassador of France to the Council of Trent since a Reformation of the Church has been all along in vain demanded in divers Councils at Constance at Basil at Ferrara Let them tell us what good change has hapned since St. Bernard wrote That the Dignities of the Church were managed by a most dishonest bartering and with a Trade of darkness That the saving of Souls was no more sought after but the abundance of Riches That it was for this that they took their Orders that they frequented the Churches and Celebrated Masses and sung Psalms Now a days says he they strive without any shame for Bishopricks for Arch-Deaconries and Abbies and other Dignities to the end they may dissipate the revenues of the Church in Superfluity and Vanity What remains but that the Man of sin the Son of Perdition should be Revealed The Demon not only of the day but of the noon day who transforms himself into an Angel of Light and lifts up himself above all that is called God and worshipped What good change could they see since Cardinal Hugo borrowing the words of Saint Bernard had wrote That those words of David could not be more properly applied to any then to the Clergy They are not in Trouble as other men For every order of men has its Labours and its pleasures but I admire says he the wisdom of our Clergy who have chosen all the pleasures for themselves and rejected the Labour They are as proud as Souldiers they have as great a train of Servants as they and of Horses and Birds and they live as merrily as they They are arrayed like women with skins of great value they have rich Bids Baths and all the Allurements of soft delights But they take great heed least they put on a Breast-plate with the Souldiers or pass away the nights in the Field or to expose themselves to Battels and yet they take less heed to keep Modesty and the Laws of Decency which are proper to women and to labour so much as they do At the Resurrection then when men shall arise every one in his own order what place do you imagine those men will find The Souldier will not own them for they took no part with them in their Labours nor in their dangers The Labourers and Dressers of the Vineyard will not any more for the same Reason What then can they look for But to be driven from and accused by all Orders and to go into those places where there is no Order but where Everlasting horrour Dwels Has it been amended since William Bishop of Mande wrote these words Alas the Churches are reduced to that Condition that when they come to be vacant one can hardly find any persons fit to be chosen to succeed And if sometimes which rarely happens there be found some good Man hid as a Lilly among the Thorns the Number of the wicked and uncapable exceeds so much that they will never let a good man be chosen Prelate but crying up such as themselves they chuse men after their own hearts to the Ruin of the Church and the people that are under them Else if the greater part in the Church were good the Elections would be made by the Majority of voices and they would be good and Canonical for those that would chuse for God would be the far greater number then those who should chuse for the Devil But in these days it is quite the contrary It is the Fashion that there must be more wicked then good so that usually the Elections are rather Diabolical then Canonical and not made by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit but by a Conspiracy or Treacherous Machination All these Complaints were to no purpose the evil was too general and too inveterate to be stopt or remedied In the Council of Constance all those Nations who liv'd under the disorders of a long and obstinate Schisme propounded some Articles to Reform as well the Head as the Members and correct the ill manners of the Church But Martin the Fifth who was then Pope eluded that Proposition with saying That that Council had already lasted four years to the great damage of the Bishops and the Churches That it was needful to turn over that business to another Time and that that Affair deserved to be thought on more leisurely because says he according to St. Jerome every Province has its Maxims and its opinions which cannot be changed without stirring up great Troubles As if Justice Piety Holiness and good Discipline were not the same among all people and in every Countrey The Council of Basil assembled some Time after with a design to proceed to a Reformation of the Head and the Members A Declaration was made very Solemnly that there the very beginning and their first Acts should contain no other thing But when they would have meddled with the Court of Rome and the Popes Soveraign Authority every one knows after what manner Eugenius the Fourth exalted himself against them and what endeavours he used to separate them or at least to render their designs unprofitable That produced new Troubles and new disorders and cast the Latin Church into a new schism For that Council declaring its right deposed Pope Eugenius and chose Amadeus Duke of Savoy but all that came to nothing For Eugenius remained Master Amadeus was at length constrained to renounce the Papacy The Council of Basil and all its good designs were brought to nothing and things remained in the same State in which they were before Which made an Author in those Times say That there could not be any thing expected from those who presided in the Councils on the behalf of the Popes unless that when they saw the affairs of the Council ordered against their Masters and against themselves they should oppose their Decrees either by Dissolving the Council or making Divisions spring up in it So that says he matters come to nothing and return into their old Chaos that is to say into Error and Darkness which no man can be ignorant of at least that has any knowledge of things past and the Tragedy that hapned in our Age at the Council of Basil is a most manifest proof of Some Time after that Pope Innocent the Eighth being dead and all preparations made for a new Nomination Lionel Bishop of Concordia made a long and fine Oration to the Cardinals who were to go into the Conclave to perswade them to make a good Election that might answer the desires of the whole Church he represented to them That Christianity was threatned every day by the Power of the Turk that the Hussites were in
they beheld and upon the Moderation that Saint Paul yet kept towards those persons whom elsewhere he Treated roughly enough that the Spirit of God did not accompany the Christians and that their Doctrine could not proceed from Heaven Will they say that those Infidels ought to have carried themselves after that manner in the time of Constantine when the Bishops that composed the Council of Nice appeared so eager and so divided among themselves that they presented the Emperour with Books of Accusations one against another managing a bloody War while they saw themselves united together in the same Assembly Will they say that they had Reason to be prejudiced against Christanity then when they saw the quarrels that rent the Church upon the Subject of the Consubstantiality of the Son of God or then when they saw those which fell out about the word of Hypostasis between the Orthodox themselves who accused one another to be Hereticks or then when the East and West were divided about the concurrence of Meletius and Paulinus for the Bishoprick of Antioch or when the Two great and Illustrious Reformers of the Church in the Time of the Arrians Eusebius of Verceil and Lucifer of Cagliari were divided upon the Subject of the Arrian Bishops who returned to the Orthodox Faith or when the Catholicks and the Donatists mutually persecuted one another and that in the very Flames of those Persecutions the Catholicks did not cease to call the Donatists always their Brethren although they oftentimes called them also Hereticks Schismaticks Pharisees c. And though they loaded them with injuries and though the Donatists on their part Treated the Catholicks with all the indignities imaginable even to the outragiously rejecting of the name of Brethren which they gave them Those who are well versed in Ecclesiastical History will yield that we might urge those Examples a great deal further if we would but take the pains to do it for there have been very few Ages wherein Christians have not been divided between themselves and that frequently upon grounds trivial enough and wherein there may not have been found in their Conduct that very thing which the Author of the Prejudices believes to be incompatible with the Spirit of God that is to say the heats of Dispute on the one side and on the other some Measures of that which he calls Humane Policy I shall not here mention the disorders which hapned about the business of Nestorius and his Heresy nor those which followed quickly after on the occasion of the Eutychians and Monothelites I shall omit the Schism of the Greeks and Latins and the re-unions which they made up sometimes among themselves out of a Humane Policy I shall say nothing of the confusions wherewith the Latin Church was agitated in those Times which Baronius calls unhappy and wherein he says the Popes made void the Acts of one another Infelicissimo tempora cum alter alterius res gestas intrusus quisque Pontifex aboleret In effect Formosus having accepted of the Papacy against the Oath that John VIII had made him take in deposing him that he would never think of being Bishop Stephen VII his Successour made him to be condemned in open Council and all the Ordinations that he had made to be void and having at last caused his Body to be taken out of his Grave he made the three Fingers wherewith they give their blessing to be cut of and thrown into the River Tiber but John IX Successour to Stephen Assembled another Council at Ravenna wherein he not only made all that Stephen and his Council had done against Formosus to be void but he even made all his Acts to be Canonically burned re-establishing the memory of Formosus and the Ordinances that he had made Some Time after Sergius a great Enemy of Formosus came to the Papacy and he annulled in his turn the Acts of the Council of Ravenna and made void all the Ordinances of Formosus Notwithstanding the Church of Rome reckons all those men among her Popes and acknowledges them all to have been lawful ones And which is further remarkable John IX in the same Act wherein he makes void the Council of Stephen and wherein he condemns it to the Flames he does not fail to call Stephen his Predecessor of Holy Memory Piae recordationis predaecessorem Upon which Baronius exhorts his Readers to Consider that although the Popes have had Predecessors very worthy of blame yet they have been wont notwithstanding to have a great deal of respect for them So that says he although Stephen had been a Detestable Pope who had invaded the Sea and who during his Papacy had committed all sorts of Execrable crimes yet John nevertheless calls him his Predecessor of Holy Memory which may appear at lest as strange as the Moderation of Zuinglius and Calvin in respect of Luther I might add to all that another Example drawn from the Conduct of the Church of Rome upon the occasion of her latter Schisms Every one knows the Divisions of the Fourteenth Century which divided all the West about the concurrence of two Anti-Popes Both Parties were extreamly Animated they look'd upon one another as Excommunicated as Anti-Christs the Enemies of God and his Church they mutually Anathematised one another they took up Arms one against another and made a bloody War Vrban VI. on his side in a Bull that began The Vine of the Lord of Sabaoth that is to say the holy Church of Rome has a great evil in her Womb and sends forth grievous Sighs c. Treats his Anti-Pope and his cardinals as a child of iniquity and Son of Perdition Vipers wicked Wretches animated with the Spirit of the Devil Schismaticks Apostates Conspirators Blasphemers c. He deposed and spoiled them of all their Honours Dignities Prelacies Offices and Benefits he confiscated their goods and declared their persons to be infamous and detestable he Excommunicated all those who believed who received them their Defenders and Favourers and even those who should give them Ecclesiastical burial if they did not pull them out of the Grave again with their own hands he forbad all faithful People of what Quality soever even Kings themselves Queens Emperours to receive them into their Lands to give or to send them either Bread or Wine or Meat or Wood or Money or Merchandise He Excommunicated particularly all those who should hold his competitor for Pope or who should call him Pope or who should receive any Favours Indulgences Dignities or Prelacies from him And as if all that had not been enough he ordained a Holy Croisado against those Shismaticks and those condemned Persons to pursue and root them out under the same Priviledges which are given to those who take up Arms for the Conquest of the Holy Land He absolved also the subjects of those Princes who should acknowledge his Anti-Pope of their Oath of Allegiance and he Excommunicated those subjects
some were even contrary to the word of God and the Authority of the Councils They add that a certain Book of their Adversaries was full of Propositions that were Dangerous Seditious Impious Schismatical Blasphemous with some openly Heretical See here what M. Daille has set down immediatly after the Examples of Cyril Saint Jerome Stephen and Saint Cyprian in which it had been well if the Author of the Prejudices would have satisfied us for he cannot be ignorant that we could urge this matter a great deal further then M. Daille has done and that he who would make up a Collection of all the Injuries that these Gentlemen say of one another would make a very strange Vocabulary But he has Judged that he ought to pass over this Article in silence and that it was more fit for his purpose to answer only upon Saint Cyril Saint Jerome Stephen and Saint Cyprian Howsoever it be it seems to be clear to me by what I have said a very ill prejudice in matters of Religion to make the Judgment that we ought to make of a Doctrine to depend upon that that we may make of the Persons instead of Judging it by the Doctrine it self and by the word of God and the Author of the Prejudices may suffer us if he pleases to say to him on the Part of our first Reformers what Saint Augustin said on the Part of the Orthodox to Cresconius Since you are not the Judge of the inward motions of our heart set your selves only to know whether we fight for or against the Truth For if we Teach the Truth if we refute Error when our intentions should not be good and if we should seek either for secular advantages or vain-glory those who have a love for the Truth will not avoid joyning with us since it would be the Truth that would be always declared after what manner soever it were so But besides those two Remarks which I have made I must further take notice in the Third place that the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices is founded upon another supposition which is not less unjust nor less rash then those other Two which I have examined For it is founded upon this Principle That we ought to Judge of Persons meerly by that ill which appears in them whereas in order to the making an equitable Judgment we ought at least to consider the good with the ill and after having made an exact discernment of the one and the other to approve of that good that may be seen and to blame that bad that may be found there It was after this manner that Zuinglius and Calvin passed their Judgments on Luther and that we Judge him also we discover a great many Excellent things in him an Heroical Courage a great Love for the Truth an ardent Zeal for the Glory of God a great Trust in his Providence Extraordinary Learning in a dark Age a profound respect of the Holy Scripture an indefatigable Spirit and a great many other high Qualities We see that he was in his Time one of the first who had their Eyes opened to consider the Errors and Abuses that were then currant in the Latin Church that he earnestly applyed himself to it that his Example excited divers others to do the same that he endured upon that Account very great Persecutions under all which his heart never failed and that by his Cares and Learned Labours he recovered divers people out of the Superstition wherein they were buried Under this prospect we cannot but give him the Just praise which we believe he merits and because we know that God is the Author of every perfect gift as Saint James says we attribute all the good that we see in Luther to his Grace and his Holy Spirit and all the happy Successes of his Preaching to the Divine Benediction looking upon him as a servant of God and an instrument which he made use of for the work of the Reformation But because there is no person in the World who has not his Excesses and his Faults amidst that which Luther had of praise worthy we see also a great many things which we know not how to approve We believe that he had not light enough about the matter of the Eucharist we find that he was very much prepossessed about the Real presence we acknowledge that his stile was too impetuous and too violent and we make no scruple to say that he has not well enough distinguished his differing opinions so as to be able to support them without breaking the bond of Communion with those who could not tolerate them which makes him fall into a great piece of injustice in respect of us Thus far methinks we may go without impugning Christian Charity if any one among us have pushed his Judgment further and would needs have Penetrated into the heart of Luther to impute his Actions to the Principles of Jealousy of Pride and Hatred as the Author of the Prejudices says that Hospinian has done it is what we do not approve of For there is nothing in the World wherein we are more easily deceived then in the Judgments which we pass upon the internal Principles of any ones Actions We may say this Action is good this Action is not good but when one Action may proceed from divers differing Principles we ought to Judge with Charity or if there be no place for a Judgment of Charity the surest way is not to Judge at all but to leave it to the knowledge of God If the Author of the Prejudices had followed this Rule he had never attributed as he has done our carriage towards Luther and the Lutherans to a piece of Human Policy he had said on the contrary that it was the effect of a Just Discernment which we could not tell how to hinder our selves from making without being culpable We blame in Luther and in the Lutherans what we Judge to be blamable there we commend that therein which we Judge to be commendable we bear with that which we believe to be tolerable without approving it and if there be any excess either in that Praise or Blame or Toleration we are ready to amend it when they shall make us to perceive it Notwithstanding we chuse rather to incline towards the side of Charity then towards that of Rigor and we would be much rather in a state wherein by the Mediation of the grace of God all sharpness animosity harsh expressions accusations complaints might be for ever banished then that we should banish our Praises and Toleration We will always preserve towards the Church of Rome the same Charity and the same Justice as much as it shall be possible for us to do but in Observing that equality we are grieved to see that we cannot but make very differing Judgments of her and of those of the Confession of Ausburg and which produce contrary effects in us These latter are in difference with us only about
visible and Transfigured into an Angel of light and in the shape of a Preacher in the Chair of Truth and what else would he perswade the Faithful too but that the Faithful ought to take very great heed not to read the Holy Scripture and not to meditate day and night upon the words of life that the Spirit of God has dictated to the Prophets and which God the Father has given to his Son for the Instruction of his Church and to draw it from the Corruption of the world to render it Holy and without Spot to his Father who gave it to him Jesus Christ was the Word uf God and liv'd by that Word and to make his Church live he gave it his word in an Intelligible Tongue out of his own mouth and by his Disciples Search says he and examine carefully the Scriptures for they are they which Testify of me Thus it is that they speak of it sometimes Jesus Christ gave his Scripture to the Faithful with a Commandment to read it to examine it carefully and to hear it It was the Judge of the beleif of the Church and the Difficulties and Questions that arose in the Doctrine of the Faith and Manners The Parishioners made use of them against their Bishops They encountred even their Ordinances by passages out of that Scripture they maintain'd that the use of them belonged to all Christians by a natural right and that to go about to deprive them of them was to do an action of the Devil But now a days they speak no more after that manner for they tell us on the contrary that it is a Ridiculous and Impossible way to Instruct men in the Truth an Infinite way which has no Issue and which is of so excessive a length that whatsoever dilligence we should use we can never arrive to the end and they labour to heap difficulties upon difficulties to drive them back and to make a Labyrinth full of Circles and confus'd ways that so out of a fear of those Confusions the world should take heed of entring into it For my own part I freely acknowledg That I can comprehend nothing in all that For if before one can assure ones self of one only Passage of Scripture whatsoever it be we must needs go through a thousand tedious ways and overcome a thousand Obstacles that arise from the Question about the Canonical Books about the Conformity of the Translations with the Originals about the different manner of reading the Passages and about the difference of Interpretations as the Author of the Prejudices would have it according to his ordinary Exaggeration to what purpose is it to give the publick a Translation which after the manner that it was given and receiv'd in cannot but be subject to the greatest part of those difficulties and yet notwithstanding they put it into all mens hands as well the Ignorant as the Learned as well of the simple as the more Inlightned as well to women as to men The Church of Rome has not declared it Authentick Two Bishops and a Doctor have approved it but two Arch-bishops and a Cardinal have forbidden it and yet one has not failed notwithstanding those Prohibitions to maintain that all the world ought to read them and that that forbidding them is a Violence a Novelty an unexampled Enterprise a bold Attempt upon the Liberty that God has given to the Church ransomed at the price of the Blood of his own Son that it is an usurpation and the Introducing of a Tyrannical Authority that was never excercised in the Church until this day and that every one is bound not only not to obey that Ordinance but even to have an Horror for it and to resist it as much as he can What will then become of those Difficulties and those unconquerable Confufions which hinder them according to the Author of the Prejudices so that they cannot assure themselves of one only Passage of the Scripture through the uncertaitty wherein a man is of the unfaithfulness of the Translations through the Ignorance wherein we are of the different manner of reading those Passages and through the necessity of consulting Interpreters Is it because they would expresly engage the People in an Infinite way and which can come to no Issue and in a ridiculous way and which is Impossible for the Instructing of any in the Truth or is it rather because they did not propound to themselves in that Translation to Instruct men in the Truths of the Faith but only to satisfy their Curiosity and to make them read good French The Author of the Prejudices may acknowledge therefore if he pleases that the heat of Disputation has carried him beyond the bounds of Right and Reason and the respect which he ought to have for the word of God and that in endeavouring to have troubled us he has done it for himself and his Freinds for if that which he has propounded were true they would give us a ground to accuse those who have publish'd the Translation of Mons of Rashness and Imprudence And it will be nothing to the purpose to say that they Publish'd it for those persons who were already Instructed in the Truths which the Church believes that therein they might receive a Confirmation and increase of the Faith by the Conformity which they should find the Doctrines of the Church have with it and that it was necessary for that that they should go through all the difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has worked since the Sole Conformity of it with the Doctrines of the Church would be sufficient to assure them that it was truly the word of God I say that answer will not satisfy For besides that it is an Injury to the word of God to make the Efficacy that it has in our Souls to depend upon the Conformity which it has with the Doctrine of the Church whereas on the contrary the Efficacy of the Doctrine of the Church ought to depend on its Conformity with the word of God besides that the Author of the Preface says expresly That the Souls of the simpler sort may find that in his Translation which is necessary for their Instruction He says not those who shall be already Instructed in that which the Church teaches but he says the Simpler sort he does not say that they would be Confirmed in the Instruction which they had already but that they would find that which should be necessary for their Instruction And elsewhere he says That the word of God that is to say in his Translation for it is about the Subject of that Translation that he speaks is the Light of the Blind and the Life of the Dead Which signifies that it gives by it self the first Impressions of the Spiritual Life So that it was not in the view of the knowledge that the simple might have of the Doctrine of the Roman Church that he publish'd that Translation if we believe the
capable of forming a true and saving Faith even in the hearts of the most simple The First is That they be sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple The Second That they be fitted to their capacity The Third That they should have a certainty great enough to form a true perswasion in their Souls and the Fourth That they should form a pure faith and free'd from all Damnable Errors But all these conditions may be found in the Object we are speaking of which are clearly propounded in the Scripture They are sufficient for Salvation For who will dare to deny that it is not sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple to know the Father the Son and the Holy-Ghost one only Eternal God wholly perfect the Creator and Preserver of the World the absolute Disposer of all events the Soveraign Lord of all things Author of all Judge of men and Angels and to form an Idea which inspires in an infinite Degree Respect Love Obedience Trust Invocation and acknowledgment of what we owe to him and which makes up the Sole Object of our Religion To know the profound misery of man his natural corruption his ignorance his sin his damnation his impotency to get out of that misery wherein he is and to form an Idea that excites humility horrour at his own state fear of Gods Judgments and those holy inquietudes of Conscience which Jesus Christ calls hunger and thirst after Righteousness To know that Jesus Christ the Son of God is our only Remedy who out of love to us was made man who dyed for our Salvation who is risen again who is ascended up into Heaven who reigns there now over all things who interceeds there before God for us and who from his high Heaven sheds abroad his Holy Spirit into the Souls of his faithful ones and to have those thoughts which make us run to him to place all our hope in him to do nothing that may displease him to do on the contrary all that he commands us to imitate him and to glorify him as he deserves as much as we are able To know the mercy of God which pardons us our Sins through Jesus Christ which gives us Heaven with all necessary graces to carry us thither and to have Sentiments that carry us out to Repentance to Confession to Prayer to Thankfulness for the Favours which he communicates to us to patience in afflictions to Trust to Charity as well towards God as toward our Neighbour to Justice to Goodness to Compassion towards those who are in misery to forgive those injuries that are done to us and to hold a Religious and brotherly Society with those who have the same Sentiments with our own Who can doubt but that these things well known and well practised as we have laid them down are not sufficient to the Salvation of the most simple But says the Author of the Prejudices It is not enough that these things should be sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple it is further necessary for the quiet of their Consciences that they should know that they are sufficient But they cannot know that without scrupulously examining the Question of the Fundamental points and the not Fundamental which requires a long and difficult discussion This Objection is vain For if those Articles which I have before set down in general are alone sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple it is impossible that a good Soul of that order should not understand their sufficiency since those Objects satisfy all the just and natural desires of the Conscience In effect They make the most simple know the God whom they ought only to serve they discover to them their own misery they mark out their Remedy and the means of their delivery they inspire into them Piety Holiness Justice Charity Repentance Consolation in their Afflictions and the hope of a life to come and they furnish them with necessary motives to the love of God and their Neighbour which is the fulfilling of the Law or as Saint Paul speaks the end of the Commandment It is not therefore necessary to the establishing the quiet of the Conscience of a man for him to enter upon the Question of the Fundamental and the not-Fundamental points nor that he should engage himself in the difficulties and distinctions that study and Meditation might furnish the Learned with on that Subject That Peace is sufficiently established by the things themselves which I have mentioned and provided that one believes and practises them well they will never fail to appease the troubles of a Soul and of setling in it a firm hope of its Salvation But says the Author of the Prejudices yet further The Roman Church and the Greek Church deny that all the Tenets necessary to Salvation should be restrained to the things that are clearly contained in the Scripture so that of necessity they must enter upon enter into the Examination of this Point for the Authority of the Church of Rome well deserves that we should not without Examination prefer the rash affirmation of a Minister before it I answer That the Sentiment of a good Conscience which contents it self with the things clearly contained in the Scripture finding it self upheld by these two Reflexions the one That God has not any more made the Souls of the meer simple then those of the most Learned to be deluded with the inventions of the humane understanding under the pretence of Tradition or of the decision of the Church and the other That God has not made his Salvation inaccessible to them well deserves to be prefered without any further Examination before all the interested pretensions of the Roman Prelates and all the Superstitious Reveries of the Greeks And after this manner it will not be necessary to enter into any dispute upon that subject They may dispute of it as much as they please in the Schools the simpler sort need not do it they are sufficiently contented to hold to all that which they find to be clearly expressed in the Scripture We must therefore pass on to the second Condition and see whether those things which I have noted are not clearly to be found in the Scripture and that in a way fitted to the capacity of the most simple But it is certain that they are to be found there and that they are laid down with sufficient Evidence not to surpass the reach of their understandings and that they are few enough for number not to exceed the force of their memories But the Author of the Prejudices demands of us what clearness we mean when we say that all the things that are necessary to Salvation are clearly contained in the Scripture For says he if Mr. Claude means such a clearness as will convince all well disposed and ill-disposed persons and that no prejudice can darken it so that he acknowledges nothing necessary to Salvation but what is expressed in the Scripture in that manner to be
points that they could not carry on their side at one time and to pass over to other matters to busie the Prelates with and to have time notwithstanding to advertise the Court of Rome and to gain the chief to the contrary party We ought to place here also the ordinary artifice of the same Legates to put off the Sessions to make many difficulties arise about matters and after divers circuits to cause in the end the Articles to be sent to the Pope which they could not make an end of by reason of the great insisting of the Nations In one word they used in the management of this Assembly all that was most refin'd most forcible and profound in humane policy promises threats secret negotiations canvasings diversions delayes Authority and in General nothing was forborn that could turn and corrupt mens minds there The Pope and his Court had a great many difficulties to overcome and oppositions to surmount which often put them into great troubles and inquietudes and fears but in the end they were so well served and they remained Masters and saw all things succeed according to their desires See here after what manner things went at Trent and by what degrees they tended to make an entire breach of Communion between the Roman and Reformed party Let any now judge if in all this conduct our Fathers had not just and lawful causes for a Separation 1. They saw in the contrary party an invincible resolution to defend and preserve the Errors and Superstitions whose amendment they demanded 2. They saw that resolution go so high as to constrain them to fall back again into those errors against all their knowledge and the motions of their own consciences 3. They saw that this violence which they offered to them had no bounds for it went not only as far as disputes not only so far as the Ordinances and Decrees but even to Excommunications and Anathema's that is to say to a Separation and Schism with a curse 4. They saw that they joyned to all this punishments not in one or two places but in all not by popular heat but in cold blood and in the usual wayes designed for the punishment of the greatest Villains 5. They saw that those punishments came from the perpetual and general inspiration of the Court of Rome which did not cease persecuting of them in all places and which proceeded so far as to search for them in their most hidden retreats 6. They saw that they refused the most equitable and necessary conditions without which they could not proceed to a just examination of Religion nor to a holy and Christian Reformation and that in stead of that the Court of Rome would alwayes remain sole Mistress and Arbitress 7. They saw lastly that instead of returning to the purity of Christianity by taking away out of the field of the Church so many corruptions that defaced it so many false opinions that destroy'd it so many kinds of Worship contrary to true Piety that dishonour'd it and destroyed the salvation of souls these Prelates on the contrary would establish things that custom only and the tradition of some Ages had for the most part introduc'd that they would establish them I say for the future in force of a Law to be incorporated into their Religion as essential and indispensable parts of it to which they would subject the minds and consciences of men which they ordain'd the practice and belief of under penalties of Anathema cutting off and separating from the body of their Society all those who should hold a contrary opinion and practice Let any judge whether our Fathers could yet after that preserve Church Communion with a Party in which they could see nothing either of the Spirit of Truth and Christian Purity and Charity resplendent and whether all hope being taken away of ever reducing them to the right way of the Gospel or even of being able to live with them without wounding their consciences by a detestable hypocrisie in pretending to believe that which they did not believe and to practising a worship which they held unlawful there not remaining any further means for them to remain in that Communion without partaking of their Errors without exposing their Children and without rendring themselves culpable before God let any I say judge whether they did not do well to separate themselves I confess that when a man is joyned with others in one and the same Body he ought not lightly to proceed to a rupture there are measures and behaviour to be observ'd that Prudence and Christian Charity require of us and as long as we have any hope of procuring the amendment and healing of our Brethren or where there is at least any way for us to bewail and to mourn for their sins without losing our own innocency and their constraining us to partake in their crimes we ought not to forsake them But when that hope is lost and when that means of preserving our own purity is taken from us when instead of being able to reduce them we see on the contrary that their Communion does but make us to cast our selves into an unavoidable necessity of corrupting our selves it is certain that we ought to withdraw our selves from them lest in partaking with their sins we should draw the just condemnation of God upon our selves Be not partaker with other mens sins sayes S. Paul but keep thy self pure CHAP. IV. An Examination of the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices taken out of the Dispute of S. Augustine against the Schism of the Donatists IT seems to me that what I have laid down hitherto le ts us clearly enough see that the only way to decide the Question of our Separation to know whether it is just or unjust is to enter into the discussion of the foundation of our Controversies and that it would be the highest injustice to go about to condemn us without ever hearing us Notwithstanding whatsoever we may have to say and how strong soever our Reasons should be the Author of the Prejudices pretends to have found out a certain way to convince us of Schism without entring upon any other examination and for this he employes the Eighth and Ninth Chapters of his Treatise I would sayes he go farther and convince them of Schism without entring upon any discussion of either their Doctrine or their Mission by their separation alone All that he sayes upon that subject may be well near reduc'd to this That there is a Church from which one ought never to separate under any pretence whatsoever and from which all those who separate themselves are Schismaticks and out of the state of salvation That the infallible and perpetual mark to know this Church according to S. Augustine and the other African Fathers is visible extension throughout all Nations because that visible extension according to them contains the Church at all times and that it is a Negative mark that is to say
receive the Sacraments from their hands They cannot say that the Church would then be dispersed nor that the greater number of the Pastors had carried away with them all the Rights of the Society but they ought on the contrary to say that being obstinate in Error and abandoning the Purity of the Faith they themselves in that respect lost the Right of being in the Society and making up a Body of an External Communion For that Principle remains always unshaken that Error Superstition and falshood do not give the least Right to any men to Assemble and that a Society is Just only in proportion to that that it has of true Doctrine and Evangelical Worship So that the greater number of the Pastors is not a Party absolutely necessary to the Body of the Church for its subsistence and this appears evidently from the Example of the Orthodox in the Time of the Arrians for as I have said before their External Communion did not cease to subsist in divers places separated from the Body of the Pastors they met together they prayed to God in Common they heard his word they received his Sacraments in a word they performed all the actions of Religion under the Ministry of those few persons that remained This is precisely the Case wherein our Fore-Fathers found themselves in the Time of the Reformation as I have before shewn and it will not signify any thing to say that that small number of Pastors that our Fathers followed had themselves according to us corrupted their Ministry by the Errors and Superstitions of the other Pastors and that they received their Call from their hands for I affirm that their return to the true Doctrine rectified their Call and freed it from all the impurity or ill it could have had after the same manner that Felix Bishop of Rome and Meletius Bishop of Antioch who being ordained by the Arrians rectified their Ministry by Preaching the Truth and opposing of Heresy and as Liberius and a great number of the other Bishops who had subscribed to Arrianism purified their Call in returning to the True Faith which they had forsaken It is certain therefore that the greater number of the Pastors is not a party of the Body of the Church absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the External Communion and that it is an Error to imagine that the bond of the Society depends on them or that there can be no Assemblies made of those who shall be separated from them but such as are Unlawful and Schismatical But in the Second place I affirm that it is not even absolutely necessary and in all respects to the making that External Society to subsist among the Faithful that it should have Pastors For as it is nature alone that makes man a Sociable living Creature that is to say that renders him capable of Civil Society and gives him also a right to it so also it is Grace which makes a Christian a sociable man which renders him I would say capable of a Religious Society and gives him a right to it Ten Men that should meet one another hy Chance in an uninhabited Desart would they not have a Right to joyn themselves actually together to assemble and to take all the joynt deliberations in publick that they should Judge necessary for their own preservation And would it not be an extravagance to demand of them what Magistrate had assembled them what publick Authority had called them together who had given them a right to speak among themselves and to consult for their common interests Then when there are lawful Magistrates their intervention is necessary for the calling and Authorising of Civil Assemblies and if any undertake to assemble together without their Authority or without their consent their Assemblies are rash and unlawful but it does not follow from thence that Magistrates should be so absolutely necessary to a Society that when there should be none men could not any more speak or act together nor assemble themselves nor take common Consultations It is the same thing in Religion if Ten Laymen of the Faithful should meet together casually or to speak better if the sole Providence of God should make them meet one another in a Desart Island or in the farthest part of America and engage them all their days in a strange Land and if they should come to acknowledge each other for true Faithful Christians can any believe that 〈◊〉 ought to remain so dispersed that they could never lawâ—â—â—â—â— commune together concerning the Christian Faith and Pieâ—â— nor meet together to provide for the preservation of their Religion This is that which I hold to be not only unable to be maintained but impious For as Nature alone assembles men when they have no Magistrates and cannot have any so Grace alone assembles Christians when they have no Pastors and cannot have any She will not suffer them to remain in an intire dispersion while there remains yet any means to assemble them it is she alone that convokes or calls them together and her instinct forms an unanimous consent in them that consent alone renders their Assembly as lawful as it can be made by the Convocation of Pastors Thus also divers Parties who divided the Latin Church in the Time of the Great Schism of the Anti Popes protested That they met together at the Council of Constance when they no more acknowledged the Pope nor by consequence held any more a Head that could lawfully call them together for they declared that they called one another together and that they assembled themselves sub Capite Christo under Jesus Christ their common Head that is to say by his instinct and under his Authority which suplied the want of a Pope Quatenus say they in illo quiest verus Ecclesiae sponsus congregati in unum simul matrem Ecclesiam divisam uniamus In respect of an Assembly in the Body of a Council each Bishop each Prelate was but a meer private man as much as every Believer is in respect of an Assembly in the Body of the Church and yet notwithstanding they assembled they reunited themselves they deposed a false Pope who troubled them even then and they created another A mutual Convocation then which is nothing else but an unanimous consent is sufficient to make an Assembly lawful when there is no Publick Authority that can call them together This is that which justifies the Conduct of our Fathers in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation for they Assembled sometimes without any Pastors to pray to God together and to Read the Holy Scriptures their Consciences could not any more allow them to be present at the Assemblies of the Roman Communion and not having further any Pastor who might Assemble them after the Ordinary manner the Spirit of Christianity Assembled them under the Soveraign Pastor and Bishop of Souls which is Jesus Christ and their mutual consent without doubt made their Society and their
House not only Vessels of Gold and Silver but Vessels also of Wood and Earth the one to Honour and the others to Dishonour They must wilfully shut their Eyes that will not acknowledge by these Passages that it is only to the Church of the Faithful and not to the Body of the Prelates that that Father refers all the Efficacy and Force of the Actions of the Ministry and all the Power of the Keys But further if you will he explains himself yet more expresly in the same Book out of which I have taken these last Words Hitherto says he I have methinks clearly enough demonstrated by the Holy Scriptures and by the Testimony of Saint Cyprian that the Wicked who have undergone no change in their Natural Estate may both give and receive Baptism Notwithstanding it is manifest that those men do not belong to the Church of God since they are Covetous Extortioners Vsurers Envious Malicious and Enslaved by such like Vices for the Church is the only Dove that is modest and Chast the Spouse without Spot and Wrinkle the Inclosed Garden the Sealed Fountain the Paradice full of Fruits and such other Titles that are given it can be understood of none but the Good the Saints and the Righteous that is to say those in whom not only the Operations of the Gifts of God are found that are common to the good and bad but who have also the inward and Supernatural Grace of the Holy Spirit It is to those that it is said Whosoevers Sins you shall remit they shall be remitted and whosoever Sins you retain they shall be retained I do not then see why we may not say that a wicked man may Administer Baptism since he may have it and as he has it to his ruine he may give it to others also to their ruine not because that that which he gives may be a Pernicious thing but because that he himself who receives it is a wicked man For when a wicked man gives Baptism to a good man who dwelling in the bond of Vnity is truly Converted the wickedness of him who gives it is overcome by the goodness of the Sacrament and the Faith of him who receives it and when his Sins are pardoned who is truly Converted to God they are pardoned to him by those with whom he is joyned by a true Conversion For the same Holy Spirit which was given to the Saints with whom he is united by the bond of Love is he who pardons them whether he knows that Body or whether he knows it not And so when the Sins of any are retained they are retained by those from whom they are separated by the Difference of their Lives and the Malice of their Hearts whether they know that Body or whether they do not It could not methinks be said either with greater strength or Clearness that all the Efficacy of the Actions of the Ministry that the Pastors Exercise depends not on the Body of the Pastors but on the Body of the truly Faithful and that in Effect they are those who pardon and retain Sins when the Ministers pardon or retain them From whence it necessarily follows That if the same Actions of the Ministry belong to the Society of the Faithful the Call of the Ministry does so also with a far greater Reason for if the Power of the Keys the right of Remitting and Retaining Sins belongs to the body of the Faithful only it must be every way necessary that the Pastors should hold the exercise of that Power from the body of the Faithful for if they should not hold it from thence they would have no Right to exercise it nor could have it elsewhere And if they should have it elsewhere or that it should belong properly to the body of the Pastors exclusively from the Simple Faithful it would be not only not true but it would be further absurd to say that the body of the Faithful exercised that Power by the Pastors or that they pardoned and retained Sins as Saint Augustine teaches I cannot avoid taking notice here by the by of that Ordinary Error whereinto those of the Church of Rome fall who do not believe that immediate absolute and Independent Authority that the Pope ascribes to himself over the whole Church but who would that the Power of the Keys is given to the whole Body of the Hierarchy that is to say to those Pastors who are Priests and Bishops For to prove their Opinion they do not fail to set the Sentiment of St. Augustine before us which plainly as we have seen shews us that the Keys were given to the whole Church from whence they draw two Conclusions The one against that great Authority that the Pope pretends to and the other for the Authority of the Bishops which they would have to flow immediately from Jesus Christ But of these two Conclusions it is certain that the First is just and wholly conforming with the thoughts of that Father but it is not less certain that the second is not and that at least without going about to deceive our selves willingly or to cheat the World we could not say that That Church figured by St. Peter to which God gave the Power of the Keys which is exercised by the Ministry of the Pastors should be any other according to Saint Augustine then the Body of the Truly Faithful and Righteous in opposition to the Worldly and the wicked who are mixed with them in the same External Profession and this is in my Judgment so clear and evident in the Doctrine of that Father that they must needs be ignorant of it who deny it It is therefore a manifest Illusion to go about to make use of those Passages in favour of the Bishops for that Church is not the Body of the Hierarchy but that of the Truly Faithful whether they be Laymen or Pastors and it is to those only that Saint Augustine ascribes all the Rights and all the Actions of the Ministry as it may appear by what I have related and by consequence it is to those that the lawful Call of the Pastors belongs and not to the Body or Order of the Hierarchy For it would be absurd to derive that Call from any thing else then from that very Church which has received the Power of the Keys and which is exercised in her Name and her Authority by her Ministers Tosta us Bishop of Abyla seems to have acknowledged this Truth conformably to the Principles of Saint Augustine for see after what manner he explains himself in his Commentaries upon Numbers upon the story of the man who was brought before the whole Assembly of Israel because some had found him gathering of Sticks upon the Sabbath Day and put him in Prison for it First of all he says That although the Acts of Jurisdiction cannot be exercised by the whole Community yet that Jurisdiction belongs to the whole Community in regard of its Origine and Efficacy because
Spirit shall be always with us and you have greived and drove him away 4. If the Church might err say they yet farther God would then be unjust in commanding us to keep our selves under the Guidance and the Ministry of the Church for that would not be an assured means of obtaining salvation All men know says Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu that God could not with any justice bind his creatures to incline to an end without giving them means to come to that end The Church cannot err since if she did err we should not have any means to come to everlasting salvation where God would have us come under the conduct of the Church But the Answer is not difficult God would that we should be saved under the Conduct of the Church that is to say of the Pastors of it not by giving a blind obedience to all that they tell us but by a wise discerning of that which is good from that which is bad and that we may make that discernment he has given us his word to which he will have usbring all that the Pastors teach to examine their Doctrine according to that Rule This is the assured means that he has left us for that If that means is not so agreeable to the men of the world who have other business to mind and wont break their brains with the Reading of the Word of God God will tell them one day that their greatest business was to serve him and to save themselves and that if they have not searched out the true means they ought only to accuse their own neglect and their too great grasping of the things of this world If they yet urge that that means is neither easie nor proper for the meaner sort we need but compare it with that of the pretended Infallibility of the Church and we shall quickly see that this last is infinitely more difficult and far less proper for the simple than the other For without taking notice of the impossibility that there is for them to be assured of this Principle that the Latin Church is Infallible supposing at the same time that it was where should any Woman or Tradesman go to seek that Infallibility to be persuaded that that which they believe and that which they practise is the true Belief and the true Worship of the Church Will they go to seek it in the Practises and Customs of the People But they all agree that the people may fall into those abuses and Superstitions that the Church does not at all approve of Will they look for it then from the voice of their Curate or from that of their Bishop But their Curate and their Bishop may be mistaken shall it be then from the Words of the Pope pronounc'd ex Cathedra But that poor Tradesman and that Woman can neither know where to find the Pope nor what they mean by ex Cathedra shall it be then from the Universal consent of the Church and her common customs But who shall tell them what that Universal Consent is Must those poor people know what they generally hold and prectise in France in Germany in Spain in Italy or that which they generally teach in the Schools It is then necessary for them to learn Greek and Latine But when they shall have learnt that how can they understand the true sence of the Councils since that without going any further the greatest part of the Canons of that of Trent are conceived in general and Ambiguous Terms which may be explained in divers sences and which very thing some say was done with design for the carrying on the different Opinions of the Schools Moreover those general and ambiguous terms somtimes leave the mind undetermined and the Conscience in suspence in matters of practice where they make it necessary to do a thing without shewing them after what manner they should do it For Example the Council of Trent decides That one ought to give to Images that Worship that is due to them this is the Infallible Voice of the Church which binds a man to give some Worship to Images which if he does not he fails in doing his Duty But what that Worship is the Council says nothing to Is it a Negative or a Positive Worship Is it that the same that they give to those they represent should be communicated to the Image as well as the Original or is it meant only of such Relative Worship that the Image should have no part of it or if has any part what is it Is it simply a customary Worship which consists in making use of those representations to excite their Piety by the remembrance of things past To tell that the Council says nothing It says indeed that the Worship which they give to Images relates to those they represent but this is not to define of what nature that Worship is for of what kind soever it is one may always say it has reference to the Original It says indeed yet further that when any Kiss their Images when they Bow to them and Kneel before them they adore Jesus Christ and the Saints but those terms denote only an external Worship without determining any thing of a more internal one and when it should determine of an internal that Council says not a word whether the Image has any part or what part it has Notwithstanding which they ought necessarily to determine it to some internal Worship for of that they treat How shall any man know whether that side which he takes in this matter be good or bad since the voice of the Church has abandoned him and after it has as it were set him in the midst of four ways and commanded him to march on never shews the way that he ought to follow but leaves him in the necessity of placing his Devotion at all adventure They will say that this is to urge things too far as to what relates to Women and Tradesmen For those persons know not what use to make of the Infallibility of the Church but only for certain General Articles which they cannot doubt of that the Church Teaches But not to insist here that those General Articles are themselves subject to form different meanings in the minds of the more simple and that they ought to make their choice with some certainty I say that the Worshiping of Images and other such like things is more used by such sort of persons than others and that many of those Devotions are proper to them about which they cannot have any certainty nor by Consequence practise them with any Faith I place in this Rank the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin which they solenmly celebrate for who can give them any certainty in that point Yet nevertheless it is a piece of Worship it is a matter of Practice or Duty whereof they cannot acquit themselves of a good Conscience without being assured of that which they do 5. In sine