means which are in our power. This Internal Communion is of absolute necessity among all Catholics. External Communion consists first in the same Creeds, or Symbols, or Confessions of Faith, which are the ancient badges or cognizances of Christianity. Secondly, in the participation of the same Sacraments. Thirdly, in the same external worship and frequent use of the same Divine Offices, or Liturgies, or Forms of serving GOD. Fourthly, in the use of the same public Rites and Ceremonies. Fifthly, in giving communicatory letters from the Church, or one person, to another. And lastly, in admission of the same discipline, and subjection to the same Supreme Ecclesiastical Authority, that is, Episcopacy, or a General Council; for as single Bishops are the heads of particular churches, so Episcopacy, that is, a General Council, or Ecumenical Assembly of Bishops, is the head of the Universal Church.- Works, p. 57. Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon's Survey. No man can justly blame me for honouring my spiritual Mother the Church of England, in whose womb I was conceived, at whose breasts I was nourished, and in whose bosom I hope to die. Bees, by the instinct of nature, do love their hives, and birds their nests. But God is my witness that, according to my uttermost talent and poor understanding, I have endeavoured to set down the naked truth impartially, without either favour or prejudice, the two capital enemies of right judgment. The one of which, like a false mirror, doth represent things fairer and straighter than they are; the other, like the tongue infected with choler, makes the sweetest meats to taste bitter. My desire hath been to have truth for my chiefest friend, and no enemy but error. If I have had any bias, it hath been desire of peace, which our common SAVIOUR left as a legacy to His Church, that I might live to see the reunion of Christendom, for which I shall always bow the knees of my heart to the Father of our LORD JESUS CHRIST. It is not impossible but that this desire of unity may have produced some unwilling error of love, but certainly I am most free from the wilful love of error. In questions of an inferior nature, CHRIST regards a charitable intention much more than a right opinion. Howsoever it be, I submit myself and my poor endeavours, First, to the judgment of the Catholic Ecumenical Essential Church, which if some, of late days, have endeavoured to hiss out of the schools as a fancy, I cannot help it. From the beginning it was not so. And if I should mistake the right Catholic Church out of human frailty or ignorance, (which, for my part, I have no reason in the world to suspect, yet it is not impossible when the Romanists themselves are divided into five or six several opinions, what this Catholic Church, or what their Infallible Judge is) I do implicitly, and in the preparation of my mind submit myself to the true Catholic Church, the Spouse of CHRIST, the Mother of the Saints, the Pillar of Truth. And seeing my adherence is firmer to the Infallible Rule of Faith, that is, the Holy Scriptures, interpreted by the Catholic Church, than to mine own private judgment or opinions; although I should unwittingly fall into an error, yet this cordial submission is an implicit retractation thereof, and I am confident will be so accepted by the Father of mercies, both from me and all others who seriously and sincerely do seek after Peace and Truth. Likewise I submit myself to the representative Church, that is, a free General Council, or so general as can be procured: and until then to the Church of England wherein I was baptized, or to a National English Synod. To the determination of all which, and each of them respectively, according to the distinct degrees of their authority, I yield a conformity and compliance, or at the least, and to the lowest of them, an acquiescence. Finally, I crave this favour from the courteous reader, that because the surveyor hath overseen almost all the principal proofs of the cause in question, (which I conceive not to be so clearly and candidly done,) he will take the pains to peruse the vindication itself. And then in the name of God let him follow the dictate of right reason. For as that scale must needs settle down whereinto most weight is put, so the mind cannot choose, but yield to the weight of perspicuous demonstration. - Works, р. 141. Schism guarded. The great bustling in the controversy concerning Papal power, or the Discipline of the Church, hath been either about the true sense of some texts of Holy Scripture; as, "thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church, and to thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven", and "feed my sheep": Or about some privileges conferred upon the Roman See by the Canons of the Fathers, and the Edicts of Emperors, but pretended by the Roman Court, and the maintainers thereof, to be held by Divine right. I endeavour in this treatise to disabuse thee, and to show that this challenge of Divine right is but a blind, or diversion, to withhold thee from finding out the true state of the question. So the hare makes her doubles and her jumps before she comes to her form, to hinder tracers from finding her out. I demonstrate to thee, that the true controversy is not concerning St. Peter, we have no formed difference about St. Peter, nor about any point of Faith, but of interest and profit; nor with the Church of Rome, but with the court of Rome, and wherein it doth consist, namely, in these questions; who shall confer English Bishopricks? who shall convocate English Synods? who shall receive Tenths, and First-fruits, and Oaths of Allegiance and Fidelity? Whether the Pope can make binding laws in England, without the consent of the King and Kingdom, or dispense with English Laws at his own pleasure, or call English subjects to Rome without the Prince's leave, or set up Legantine Courts in England against their wills? And this I show not out of the opinions of particular authors, but out of the public laws of the Kingdom. I prove, moreover, out of our Fundamental Laws, and the writings of our best Historiographers, that all these branches of Papal power were abuses, and innovations, and usurpations, first attempted to be introduced into England above eleven hundred years after CHRIST, with the names of the innovators, and the precise time when each innovation began, and the opposition that was made against it by our Kings, by our Bishops, by our Peers, by our Parliaments, with the groans of the Kingdom under these Papal innovations and extortions. Likewise, in point of doctrine, thou hast been instructed that the Catholic Faith doth comprehend all those points which are controverted between us and the Church of Rome, without the express belief whereof no Christian can be saved; whereas, in truth, all these are but opinions, yet some more dangerous than others. If none of them had ever been started in the world, there is sufficient to salvation for points to be believed in the Apostles' Creed. Into this Apostolical Faith, professed in the Creed, and explicated by the four first General Councils, and only into this Faith we have all been baptized. Far be it from us to imagine, that the Catholic Church hath ever more baptized, and doth still baptize but into one half of the Christian Faith. In sum, dost thou desire to live in the communion of the true Catholic Church? So do I. But as I dare not change the cognizance of my christianity, that is, my Creed, nor enlarge the Christian Faith (I mean the essentials of it) beyond those bounds which the Apostles have set, so I dare not (to serve the interest of the Roman Court) limit the Catholic Church, which CHRIST hath purchased with his blood, to a fourth or a fifth part of the Christian world. Thou art for tradition, so am I. But my tradition is not the tradition of one particular Church contradicted by the tradition of another Church, but the universal and perpetual tradition of the Christian world united. Such a tradition is a full proof, which is received semper, ubique, et ab omnibus; always, everywhere, and by all Christians. Neither do I look upon the opposition of an handful of heretics (they are no more, being compared to the innumerable multitudes of Christians,) in one or two ages, as inconsistent with universality, any more than the highest mountains are inconsistent with the roundness of the earth. Thou desirest to bear the same respect to the Church of Rome that thy ancestors did; so do I. But for that fulness of power, yea, co-active power in the exterior Court, over the subjects of other Princes, and against their wills, devised by the Court of Rome, not by the Church of Rome: it is that pernicious source from whence all these usurpations did spring. Our ancestors from time to time made laws against it; and our Reformation, in point of Discipline, being rightly understood, was but a pursuing of their steps. The true controversy is, whether the Bishop of Rome ought, by Divine right, to have the external regiment of the English Church, and co-active jurisdiction in English Courts, over English subjects, against the will of the King and the Laws of the Kingdom.--- Works, p. 289. 1bid. As for Essentials of Faith, the pillars of the earth are not founded more firmly than our belief upon that undoubted rule of Vincentius, Quicquid ubique semper et ab omnibus, &c. Whatso ever we believe as an article of our Faith, we have for it the testimony and approbation of the whole Christian world of all ages, and therein the Church of Rome itself. But they have no such perpetual or universal tradition for their twelve new Articles of Pope Pius. This objection would have become me much better than him. Whatsoever we believe, they believe, and all the Christian world of all places, and all ages, doth now believe, and ever did believe, except condemned heretics. But they endeavour to obtrude new essentials of Faith upon the Christian world which have no such perpetual or such universal tradition, He that accuseth another, should have an eye to himself. Does not all the world see that the Church of England stands no otherwise in order to the Church of Rome, than it did in Henry the Seventh's days? He addeth further, that it is confessed that the Papal power in Ecclesiastical affairs was cast out of England in Henry the Eighth's days. I answer that there was no mutation concerning Faith, nor concerning any legacy which CHRIST left to His Church, nor concerning the power of the Keys, or any jurisdiction purely spiritual, but concerning co-active power in the Exterior Court, concerning the Political or External Regiment of the Church, concerning the Patronage or Civil Sovereignty over the Church of England, and the Legislative, Judiciary, and Dispensative power of the Pope in England, over English subjects, which was no more than a reinfranchisement of ourselves, from the upstart usurpations of the Court of Rome, of all which I have showed him expressly the first source, who began them, when, and where; before which he is not able to give one instance of any such practices attempted by the Bishop of Rome, and admitted by the Church of England. - Works, p. 342. SANDERSON, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR. Nor will their flying to tradition help them in this case, or free them from Pharisaism; but rather make the more against them. For to omit that it hath been the usual course of false teachers, when their doctrines were found not to be Scripture-proof, to fly to tradition: do but inquire a little into the original and growth of Pharisaical traditions, and you shall find that one egg is not more like another. than the Papists and the Pharisees are alike in this matter. When Sadoc (or whosoever else was the first author of the sect of the Sadducees) and his followers began to vent their pestilent and Atheistical doctrines against the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and other like: the best learned among the Jews, (the Pharisees especially) opposed against them by arguments and collections drawn from the Scriptures. 'The Sadducees finding themselves unable to hold argument with them, (as having two shrewd disadvantages, but a little learning and a bad cause,) had no other means to avoid the force of all their arguments, than to hold them precisely to the letter of the text, without admitting any exposition thereof, or collection therefrom. Unless they could bring clear text, that should affirm totidem verbis what they denied, they would not yield. The Pharisees, on the contrary, refused (as they had good cause) to be tied to such unreasonable conditions; but stood upon the meaning of the Scriptures, as the Sadducees did upon the letter; confirming the truth of their interpretations partly from reason, and partly from tradition. Not meaning by tradition (as yet) any doctrine other than what was already sufficiently contained in the Scriptures; but merely the doctrine which had been in all ages constantly taught and received with an universal consent among the people of God, as consonant to the Holy Scriptures, and grounded thereon. By this means, though they could not satisfy the Sadducees (as Heretics and Sectaries commonly are obstinate,) yet so far they satisfied the generality of the people, that they grew into very great esteem with them; and within a while carried all before them: the detestation of the Sadducees and of their loose errors also conducing not a little thereunto. And who now but the Pharisees: and what now but tradition? in every man's eye and mouth. Things being at this pass, any wise man may judge, how easy a matter it was for men |