CHAP. I. Popery no way to Unity
CHAP. I. Popery no way to Unity.
T he thoughts of the divided state of Christians have brought one of the greatest and constantest sadness to my Soul, that ever it was acquainted with; especially to remember, that while we are quarrelling, and plotting, and writing, and fighting against each other, so many parts of the world (about five of six) remain in the Infidelity of Heathenism, Judaism or Mohammedanism, where millions of poor souls do need our help; and if all our strength were joined together for their Illumination and Salvation, it would be too little. Oh horrible shame to the face of Christendom, that the Nations are quietly serving the Devil, and the Turk is in possession of so many Countries, that once were the Inheritance of Christ, and that his Iron yoke is still upon the necks of the persecuted Greeks, and that he stands up at our doors in so formidable a posture, still ready to devour the rest of the Christian world; and yet that instead of combining to resist him, and vindicate the cause and people of the Lord, we are greedily sucking the blood of one another, and tearing in pieces the body of Christ with furious hands, and destroying ourselves to save the enemy a labor, and spending
that wit, that treasure, that labor and that blood, to dash ourselves in pieces on one another, which might be nobly, and honestly, and happily spent in the cause of God.
These thoughts provoked me to many an hours consideration, How the wounds of the Church might be yet healed; And have made it long a principal part of my daily Prayers, that the Reconciling Light might shine from Heaven, that might in some good measure take up our differences; and that God would at last give healing Principles and dispositions unto men, especially to Princes and the Pastors of the Church. But the more I studied how it might be done, the more difficult, if not impossible it appeared, and all because of the Roman Tyranny, the Vice-Christ or pretended Head of the Church, being with them become an essential part of it, and the Subjection to him essential to our Christianity itself. So that (saith Bellarmine de
Eccles. l. 3, c. 5.) No man, though he would, can be a Subject of Christ, that is not subject to the Pope; and this with abundance of intolerable corruptions they have fixed by the fancy of their own Infallibility, and built upon this foundation a worldly Kingdom, and the temporal Riches and Dignity of a numerous Clergy, twisting some Princes also into the Interest; so that they cannot possibly yield to us in the very principal points of difference, unless they will deny the very Essence of their New Christianity and Church, and pluck up the foundations which they have so industriously laid, and leave men to a suspicion that they are fallible hereafter, if they shall confess themselves mistaken in anything now; and unless they will be so admirably self-denying, as to let go the temporal advantages which so many thousands of them are interested in: And whether so much light may be hoped for in so dark a generation, or so much love to God, and selfdenial in millions of men so void of self-denial, is easy to conjecture: And
we cannot in these greatest matters come over to them, unless we will flatly betray our Souls, and depart from the Unity of the Catholic Church, and from the Center of that Unity, to unite with another called the Roman
Catholic Church, in another Center. And if we should thus cast away the Truth and Favor of God, and sin against our Knowledge and Conscience, and so prove men of no Faith or Religion, under pretense of desiring a Unity in Faith and Religion, yet all would not do the thing intended, but we should certainly miss of these very ends which we seek, when we had sold the Truth and our Souls to obtain them. For there is nothing more certain, then that the Christian World will never unite in the Roman Vice-Christ, nor agree with them in their Corruptions, against plain Scripture, Tradition,
Consent of the ancient Church, against the Reason and common sense of Mankind, This is not by any wise man to be expected. Never did the universal Church, or one half of it center to this day in the Roman
Sovereignty: And why should they hope for that which never yet was done?
When they had their Primacy of Place (to be the Bishop of the first Seat, and first of the Patriarchs) it made the Pope no more a Sovereign and a Vice-Christ, then the King of France is Sovereign to the Duke of Saxony or Bavaria; or then the Senior Justice on the Bench is the Sovereign of the rest: and yet even this much he never had but from the Roman Empire: What claim did he ever lay in his first Usurpations, to any Church without those bounds? It was the Empire that raised him, and the Empire limited his own
Usurpations. Saith their own Reinerius, (or whoever else) Cont. Waldens.
Catal. in Biblioth. Patr. To. 4, pag 773. [The Churches of the Armenians, and Ethiopians, and Indians, and the rest which the Apostles converted, are not under the Church of Rome.] Yea in Gregory's days, they found the Churches of Britain and Ireland both strangers and adversaries to their
Sovereignty; insomuch as they could not procure them to receive their Government, nor change so much as the time of Easter for them, no nor to have Communion with them at last: Anno 614. Laurentius their ArchBishop here wrote this Letter (with Mellitus and Justus) to the Bishops and Abbots in all Scotland (that is, Ireland) [While the Sea Apostolic after its manner directed us to preach to the Pagan Nations in these Western parts, as in the whole world; and we happened to enter this Island, called Britain, before we knew them, believing that they walked after the manner of the universal Church, we reverenced both the Britons and the Scots in great
Reverence of their Sanctity. But when we knew the Britons, we thought the Scots were better. But we have learnt by Daganus the Bishop in this forementioned Island, and by Columbanus the Abbot coming into France, that the Scots do nothing differ from the Britons in their Conversation. For Bishop Daganus coming to us, refused not only to eat with us, but even to eat in the same House where we did eat.] Usher Epist. Hibern. 7, p. 18.
Our most peaceable Bishop Hall was forced to write a [Roma irreconciliabilis.] While we are thinking of Reconciliation, they are about our ears with Plots and violence, and with swarms of Rome-bred Sects, and are day and night industriously undermining us; so that by their continual
Alarms, I am called off to these defensive wars which here I have undertaken; yet still resolving that the Desperateness of the Cure shall not make me run from them into a contrary extreme, nor be out of the way of Peace, nor neglect any necessary means, how hopeless soever of success.
The Work that here I have undertaken, is, 1. To give you briefly those Grounds on which you must go, if you will keep your ground against a Papist. 2. To give a few invincible Arguments, which the weakest may be able to use, to overthrow the principal grounds of the Papists. 3. To detect
their Frauds, and give to the younger sort of Ministers, sufficient Directions for the Confutation of all the Papists in the world. 4. To propound (though in vain) such terms of Peace as we can yield to.