not left the Roman essentials. of this foundation she may, and doubtless doth, bring forth DISCOURSE many true" members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven." The Church of the Jews was most erroneous and corrupted in the days of our Saviour; yet he doubted not to say, "Salvation is of the Jews." John fv. 22. I know it is said, that Christ hath given Himself for His Eph. v. Church to sanctify it, and cleanse it, and present it to Himself 25-27. a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle.' But that is to be understood inchoatively in this life; the perfection and consummation thereof is to be expected in the life to come. To the second question, whether the Church of England in we have the Reformation have forsaken the essentials of the Roman Church, I answer negatively; we have not. If weeds be Church in of the essence of a garden, or corrupt humours or botches or wens and excrescences be of the essence of man; if errors and innovations and superstitions and superfluous rites and pecuniary arts be of the essence of a Church; then indeed we have forsaken the Roman Church in its essentials: otherwise not. We retain the same Creed to a word, and in the same sense, by which all the primitive Fathers were saved; which they held to be so sufficient, that in a general Council they did forbid all persons (under pain of deposition to Bishops and clerks, and anathematisation to laymen) to compose or obtrude any other upon any persons converted from Paganism or Judaism. We retain the same Sacraments and discipline which they retained; we derive our Holy Orders by lineal succession from them; we make their doctrine and their practice (under the Holy Scriptures, and as best expositors thereof) a standard and seal of truth between the Romanists and us. It is not we, who have forsaken the essence of the modern Roman Church by substraction; but they, who have forsaken the essence of the ancient Roman Church by addition. Can we not forsake their new Creed unless we forsake their old Faith? Can we not reduce the Liturgy into a known tongue, but presently we forsake the public worship of God? Can we not take away their tradition of the patine and chalice, and reform their new matter and form in Presbyterian Ordination (which antiquity did * Concil. Ephes. [A. D. 431.] P. ii. Act. vi. c. 7. [ap. Labb., Concil., tom. iii. p. 689. A.] I. PART never know, which no Church in the world besides themselves did ever use), but presently we forsake Holy Orders? The truth is, their errors are in the excess, and these excesses they themselves have determined to be essentials of true religion. And so, upon pretence of interpreting, they intrude into the legislative office of Christ; and being but a Patriarchal Church, do usurp a power which the Universal Church did never own, that is, to constitute new essentials of Christian religion. Before the determination their excesses might have passed for probable opinions or indifferent practices; but after the determination of them as articles of Faith, 'extra quam non est salus' - 'without which there is no salvation' (they are the words of the Bull), they became inexcusable errors. So both the pretended "contradiction" and the pretended "blasphemy" are vanished in an instant. It is no contradiction to say, that a true human body in 151 substance may require purgation; nor blasphemy to say, that a particular Church (as Church of Rome is) may err, and (which is more than we charge them withal) may apostate from Christ. In the mean time we preserve all due respect to the Universal Church, and doubt not to say with St. Austin, that "to dispute" against the sense thereof, "is most insolent madness "" [5. The noted in His "fifth point" to be noted hath little new worth noting fifth point in it, but tautologies and repetitions of the same things over "Some Protestants," saith he, do "impudently deny that they are substantially separated from the Roman Church c." R. C.'s Preface.] [We do] not differ in sub the Roman and over. If this be impudence, what is ingenuity? If this be such a gross error for man to be ashamed of, what is evident truth? stance from We expected thanks for our moderation, and behold reviling Church. for our good will. He might have been pleased to remember what himself hath cited so often out of my Vindication, that our Church since the Reformation is "the same in substance" that it was before ". If "the same in substance," then not [See p. 36. note q.] 66 nemo a ["Extra quam" (fidem) b August., Ep. 118. [cditt. before Bened.-54. Ad Januar., c. 5. § 6. tom. ii. p. 126. C. ed. Bened.] [Surv., Pref., p. 10.] Just Vindic., c. vi. (vol. i. p. 199), Disc. ii. Pt. i.] [Numb. Josh. xiv. substantially separated. Our comfort is, that Caleb and DISCOURSE Joshua alone were admitted into the land of promise, because they had been peacemakers in a seditious time, and endea- xiv. 38. voured not to enlarge but to make up the breach. He adds, 610.) that "the chiefest Protestants do confess" that they are "substantially separated from the Roman Church." Who these "chiefest Protestants" are, he tells us not; nor what they say; but refers us to another of his treatises, which I neither know here how to compass, nor, if I could, deem it worth the labour. When these principal Protestants come to be viewed throughly and seriously with indifferent eyes, it will appear, that either by "substantially" they mean really, that is to say, that the differences between us are not mere logomachies or contentions about words and different forms of expression only, but that there are some real controversies between us both in credendis and agendis, and more, and more real, in agendis, than in credendis; or, secondly, that by "substance" they understand, not the old essentials or articles of Christian religion, wherein we both agree, but the new essentials or new articles of Faith lately made by the Romanists, and comprehended in the Creed of Pius the Fourth, about which we do truly differ;-so we differ "substantially" in the language of the present Romanists, but we differ not substantially in the sense of the primitive Fathers; the generation of these new articles is the corruption of the old Creed:-or, lastly, if one or two Protestant authors, either bred up in hostility against new Rome, as Hannibal was against old Rome, or in the heat of contention, or without due consideration, or out of prejudice or passion or a distempered zeal, have overshot themselves, what is that to us? Or what doth that concern the Church of England? He saith, "St. Austin told the Donatists," that though "they were with him in many things," yet, "if they were not with him in few things, the many things wherein they were with him would not profit them." But what were these few things wherein St. Austin required their communion? Were they abuses, or innovations, or new articles of faith? No, no, the truth is, St. Austin professed to the Donatists, e [Surv., Pref., p. 11.] f [Viz. De Author. Protestant., lib. ii. c. 11.] [Surv., Pref, pp. 11, 12.] PART I. [6. The sixth point noted in R. C.'s Preface.] [The case of the England that "many things and great things would profit them Furthermore he proveth out of the Creed and the Fathers, that "the communion of the Church is necessary to salvation;" to what purpose I do not understand (unless it be to reprove the unchristian and uncharitable censures of the Roman Court); for neither is the Roman Church the Catholic Church, nor a communion of saints a communion in errors. His sixth and "last point," which he "proposeth to judicious Protestants," is this; "that, though it were not evident, that the Protestant Church is schismatical," but only "doubtful," yet, it being "evident that the Roman Church is not schismatical,-because (as Doctor Sutcliff confesseth) 'they never went out of any known Christian society,' nor can any Protestant prove that they did,”—it is the most 152 prudent way for a man to do for his soul, as he would do for "his lands, liberty, honour, or life," that is, to choose the safest way, namely, "to live and die" free from schism "in the communion of the Roman Church." I answer, first, that he changeth the subject of the question. Church of My proposition was, that the Church of England is free from not to be schism; he ever and anon enlargeth it to all Protestant perplexed Churches: and what or how many Churches he intendeth under that name and notion, I know not. Not that I Churches.] censure any foreign Churches (with whose laws and liberties I am not so well acquainted as with our own); but because with those of other Protestant III. I conceive the case of the Church of England to be as clear DISCOURSE as the sun at noon-day, and am not willing for the present to have it perplexed with heterogeneous disputes. So often as he stumbleth upon this mistake, I must make bold to tell him, that he concludes not the contradictory. doubtful the Church Secondly, I answer, that he disputes ex non concessis,' [It is not laying that for a foundation granted to him, which is alto- whether gether denied him, namely, that it is a "doubtful" case, of England whether the Church of England be schismatical or not:- be schismatical or not.] whereas no Church under heaven is really more free from just suspicion of schism than the Church of England, as not censuring nor excluding uncharitably from her communion any true Church which retains the essentials of Christian religion. evident Roman Church is schism.] Thirdly, I answer, that it is so far from being "evident" [It is not that the Roman Church is guiltless of schism, that I wish it that the were not evident that the Roman Court is guilty of formal schism, and all that adhere unto it and maintain its censures, guiltless of of material schism. If it be schism to desert altogether the communion of any one true particular Church, what is it not only to desert, but cast out of the Church, by the ban of excommunication, so many Christian Churches? over which they have no jurisdiction; three times more numerous than themselves; and, notwithstanding some few (perhaps) improper expressions of some of them, as good (or better) Christians and Catholics as themselves; who suffer daily, and are ready to suffer to the last drop of their blood, for the name of Christ. If contumacy against one lawful single superior be schismatical, what is rebellion against the sovereign ecclesiastical tribunal, that is, a general Council? But I am far from concluding all indistinctly. I know there are many in that Church, who continue firm in the doctrine of the Councils of Constance and Basle, attributing no more to the Pope than his "principium unitatis," and subjecting both him, and his Court, to the jurisdiction of an Ecumenical Council. lawful or Fourthly, I answer, that supposing, but not granting, that It is not it was "doubtful," whether the Church of England were prudent, schismatical or not, and supposing in like manner that it were "evident, that the Church of Rome was not schismat- otherwise,] even were the case to leave the English |