he can be infallible in nothing Protestants believe Christ to be an infallible Teacher and the Christian Faith to be infallibly true and this they believe with all the firmness and certainty of assent but this is not what the Church of Rome used to call Infallibility though the Jesuite if it be not meer want of understanding in him seems to be hammering out a new notion of Infallibility but it is but a rude and imperfect Embryo yet we shall see what they will make of it in time And here I find my self obliged to look a little backwards to see how he states the Churches Infallibility for he mightily complains of Protestant Misrepresentations about it Our Guide then he tells us is the Catholick Church either diffusive in its whole extent that is as it contains or signifies the whole number of Christians all the World over or representative in its Head and Bishops the Pope and a General Council The Church diffusive or the whole number of Christians on Earth is most certainly the true notion of the Catholick Church on Earth is that Church to which most of the Promises made to The Church in Scripture are made but how this Church diffusive should be our Guide wants to be explained if the Church diffusive or the whole number of Christians is the Guide who is to be guided unless the Guide is to be a Guide only to himself However I hope then every particular Christian will be allowed a private judgment of his own for the Church diffusive will be a very strange Guide if it cannot use its own reason and judgment and how the whole which consists of all particular Christians should judge for itself when no particular Christian must judge is somewhat mysterious that is that all Christians must judge and yet none must judge But I will not dispute with him about this but whenever he will collect the Votes of the Church diffusive or of all the Christians in the World I promise to subscribe to their Definitions The Representative Church is the Head and Bishops the Pope and a General Council I thought the Pope in Jesuits Divinity had been the Church virtual and a General Council the Church representative But I have in a late Discourse proved that the Pope is not the Head of the Catholick Church nor a Council of Bishops the representative of it and he may try his skill upon it when he pleases Now it seems the Church diffusive has the keeping of the general faith of Christians first received from Christ and his Apostles and preserved by all Bishops in their respective Diocesses and in the minds and actions of each faithful Believer in the whole Catholick Church Strange that our Jesuite should now at last turn a meer Blackloist or Traditionary Divine This general Faith of Christians he compares to the common Laws of the Land to shew I suppose his skill in the Law and make the learned Gentlemen of the Temple to pity or scorn The Master's ignorance well let that be as it will for I pretend to no skill in Laws but as for this general Faith of Christians whatever it be like I would gladly learn from the Church diffusive what it is for I matter nothing else but the General Faith of Christians but how to learn this he has not told us it is preserved he says by all Bishops in their respective Diocesses and in the minds and actions of each faithful Believer in the whole Catholick Church Well then must we examine all Bishops and every particular Believer about this this is impossible to be done will any one Bishop or any one particular Believer since every Bishop and every particular Believer has it suffice to tell us what this general Faith of Christians is is this an infallible Conveyance of the Faith to depend upon the Tradition of Bishops and Christian People is there no faithful and authentick Record of this Faith from whence we may learn what Christ and his Apostles delivered to the Church So one would think by this Jesuit's account who takes no notice of the Holy Scriptures as if the common Faith of Christians could not be learnt from them but from the tradition of the Church diffusive Thus much for Common Law but the Church has her Statute Laws too and they are the Decisions or Canons of General Councils declaring and applying to particular Instances the Common Law and Belief of the Church but how does the Pope and a General Council or the Church representative as he calls it come to have the power of declaring and applying the common Faith of Christians which is in the keeping of the Church diffusive and therefore one would think could be declared by none else do the Pope and a General Council infallibly know the Sentiments and Opinions of all the Christian Bishops and People in the World This they must do or else they cannot declare the common Faith of Christians unless they can infallibly declare what they do not know If their Authority be only to declare the common Faith of Christians how shall we know that they declare nothing but the common Faith of Christians for if they do their Decrees are not valid for they declare that which is false This Jesuit has greatly intangled and perplexed the Cause by laying the whole stress upon the declarative and applying Power Had he said that the Pope and a General Council had Authority to declare what is the Christian Faith and though they declared that to be the true Faith which the Church diffusive never heard of before yet after their decision it must be received as the common Faith of Christians though it had not been so formerly there had been some sense in this though no truth but when he says the Church can only declare what is and always has been the common Faith of Christians if I can find by ancient Records that what the Council declares to be the common Faith of Christians now was either not known or condemned in former Ages if I certainly know that she declares that to be the Faith which at the very time of the Council was so far from being the common Faith of Christians that it was not the common Faith of the Council but was contradicted by the wisest and best part of it then I certainly know that the Council has not declared the common Faith of Christians and therefore that its Decrees are of no Authority But he proceeds We hold that this general Faith received from the Apostles and preserved in all the Members of the Catholick Church explained upon occasion by the Church representative is infallibly true and this is all the Infallibility the Catholick Church pretends to And there is no Protestant but will own this Infallibility That the Faith at first received from the Apostles the same Faith which was delivered by the Apostles preserved in all the Members of the Catholick Church and the same Faith explained upon occasion
single sheet was only swelled up with words but void of Sense and Reason A strange Tympany this poor Preservative was sick of that when the wordy swelling was taken down that and the Answer too could be reduced to a single sheet But the Prefacer he says should have pointed at some pretended proofs which he slighted to expose or have praised him for not wearying his Readers with a dull prolixity But the Prefacer pointed him to the Book and that was enough unless he would have had him transcribe the Book again and concluded every entire Argument with this is not Answered by the Iesuite For I know not any one paragraph that he has pretended to answer though some single sayings he has nibled at and little pieces of Argument as appears from this Vindication and that so dully too that there was no need of more prolixity to tire his Readers Our Author little thinks how he exposes his Reputation among our people by such vain brags as these They can find a great many Arguments which he has not medled with and therefore conclude the Jesuite to be very blind or very impudent in pretending to have answered all he could find or which it may be is the truth of the case that he was not trusted to read the Preservative but had some sayings picked out for him to answer and he mistook them for the whole 4 ly That when he talks big of Calumnies and Misrepresentation he woulâ— not only say but prove them to be so that is that I attribute any Doctrines to them which are not taught by their own Councils and Doctors or impute such Practices to them as they are not guilty of for this Cry of Misrepresenting is grown so familiar now and that Charge has been so often bafled of late that our People will not take his Word for it nor allow every Argument he cannot Answer to pass for a Misrepresentation 5 ly I would advise him to have a care that he do not Confute his own Church while he is zealous to Confute his Adversary this often happens and has done so to him in this very Dispute especially in his Talk of Moral Infallibility which has effectually given up the Roman pretences to Infallibility as I have shewn above 6 ly If he resolves to Write again I desire him to take but any one Chapter or Section in the Preservative and try his skill on it not to pick out a single Saying or two but to Answer the whole Series of Argumentâ— as they lie there and if he can make any work of it I promise him a very grave and modest Reply But if he skips about from one Page to another and only hunts for Calumnies and Misrepresentations as he calls them which he first artificially makes by changing Words and Periods and joyning Sentences which have no relation to each other and then triumphs over his own Creatures I shall leave him to be answered and chastized by any Footman who pleases to undertake him and I wish the next may not be so much his Over-match as the first was I have taken no Notice of his Postscript in Answer to the Preface to the Protestant Footman's Defence of the Preservative That Author is able to Answer for himself if he thinks fit but I presume he looks upon that Dispute as at an end if Disputes must ever have an end for when all is said that a Cause 〈◊〉 bear and the same Arguments and the same Answers come to be repeated over again it is time then for a modest man to have done and to leave the World to judge unless Disputing be only an Art of Scolding where the last Word is thought the Victory THE END Books Printed for and are to be Sold by W. 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