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ART. have erred; both that where our Saviour himself first taught, XIX. and which was governed by two of the apostles successively, and those which were founded by St. Peter in person, or by proxy, as church-history represents Alexandria and Antioch to have been. Those of the church of Rome, by whom they are at this day condemned both of heresy and schism, do not dispute this. Nor do they dispute that many of their popes have led bad and flagitious lives: they deny not that the canons, ceremonies, and government of the church, are very much changed by the influence and authority of their popes: but the whole question turns upon this, Whether the see of Rome has erred in matters of faith or not? In this those of that communion are divided: some, by the church or see of Rome, mean the popes personally; so they maintain, that they never have, and never can fall into error: whereas others, by the see of Rome, mean that whole body that holds communion with Rome, which they say cannot be tainted with error; and these separate this from the personal infallibility of popes for if a pope should err, they think that a general council has authority to proceed against him, and to deprive him and thus, though he should err, the see might be kept free from error. I shall upon this Article only consider the first opinion, reserving the consideration of the second to the Article concerning general councils.

us for adoring Christ's real body in heaven. We accuse them for taking away the cup from the lay people: they excuse it, but they do not condemn us for following Christ's example, and receiving in both kinds. And what is remarkable and comfortable to all believing Protestants, we charge them with flat idolatry in the adoration of the sacrament, of relics, of saints, of images. And, howsoever they excuse themselves in distinguishing their manner of adoration, yet, I say, to our endless comfort be it spoken, they cannot charge us, in the doctrine of our church, no, not with the least suspicion of idolatry.'

Others would trace the church in the footsteps of the various churches and individuals that have been persecuted by the papal see.

This course is adopted and well handled by Mournay, count de Plessis, in his address to the Friends and Followers of the Church of Rome,' at the beginning of his Mystery of Iniquity, the History of the Papacy,' in which he points out where our church was all the time preceding the Reformation, and ably retorts, calling on them to shew where their church was in 'those six hundred years next after Christ.' The former part he winds up in the following beautiful sentence, which, although this note is unavoidably long, the Editor cannot deny himself and the reader the pleasure of quoting and perusing:

And now thou knowest where our church was in all this time. Thou, rude and simple as thou art, thinkest, perhaps, when thou seest the sun to set in the west, that it is swallowed up in the occan, and quite extinguished, wherein indeed, when it sets to thee, it riseth to others, and returns again to thee in his due time, and misseth not a minute; the river Rosny, when it entereth into the Lake of Lozanna, thou thinkest it is quite devoured, but that lively and running water cutteth and divideth that dead and standing pool, making way through her swallowing depths: our church in like manner hath made her way through many ages, hath run into the lake, yet not overwhelmed, but hath past through the bottomless gulfs thereof with glory and triumph; and many rivers meeting her, she passeth through many countries, and at the last falls into her ocean, the church of Christ into God, the bottomless sea of all goodness, and there is drowned, losing herself

to find herself in Him.'

The reader should also, on this point, read Stillingfleet's Rational Account of the Grounds of the Protestant Religion; art. 'the Reformation of the Church of England justified.'—[ ED.]

XIX.

As to the popes their being subject to error, that must be ART. confessed, unless it can be proved, that, by a clear and express privilege granted them by God, they are excepted out of the common condition of human nature. It is further highly probable that there is no such privilege, since the church continued for many ages before it was so much as pretended to; and that in a time when that see was not only claiming all the rights that belonged to it, but challenging a great many that were flatly denied and rejected: such as the right of receiving appeals from the African churches; in which reiterated instances, and a bold claim upon a spurious canon, pretended to be of the council of Nice, were long pursued: but those churches asserted their authority of ending all matters within themselves. In all this contest infallibility was never claimed; no more than it had been by Victor, when he excommunicated the Asian churches for observing Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, and not on the Lord's-day after, according to the custom of the Roman as well as of other churches.

23-25.

Oxon.

et 7.

When pope Stephen quarrelled with St. Cyprian about the Euseb.His. rebaptizing of heretics, Cyprian and Firmilian were so far Eccl.l.v.c. from submitting to his authority, that they speak of him with Cypr. Ep. a freedom used by equals, and with a severity that shewed 74 et 75. they were far from thinking him infallible. When the whole Firmil. east was distracted with the disputes occasioned by the Arian Con. controversy, there was so much partiality in all their councils, Sard. c. 3, that it was decreed, that appeals should be made to pope Julius, and afterwards to his successors; though here was an occasion given to assert his infallibility, if it had been thought on, yet none ever spoke of it. Great reverence was paid to that church, both because they believed it was founded by St. Peter and St. Paul, and chiefly because it was the imperial city; for we see that all other sees had that degree of dignity given them, which by the constitution of the Roman empire was lodged in their cities: and so when Byzance was made the imperial city, and called New Rome, though more commonly Constantinople, it had a patriarchal dignity bestowed on it; and was in all things declared equal to Old Rome, only the point of rank and order excepted. This was decreed in two general councils, the second and the fourth, in so express a manner, that it alone before equitable judges would fully shew the sense of the church in the fourth and fifth century upon this head. When pope Liberius condemned Athanasius, and subscribed to semi-Arianism, this was never Con. considered as a new decision in that matter, so that it altered Const. the state of it. No use was made of it, nor was any argument Cap. 3. drawn from it. Liberius was universally condemned for what ced. c. 28. he had done; and when he repented of it, and retracted it, he was again owned by the church.

We have in the sixth century a most undeniable instance of the sense of the whole church in this matter. Pope

Con. Chal

ART. Honorius was by the sixth general council condemned as a XIX. Monothelite; and this in the presence of the pope's legates,

and he was anathematized by several of the succeeding popes. It is to no purpose here to examine whether he was justly or unjustly condemned; it is enough that the sense both of the eastern and western church appeared evidently in that age upon these two points; that a pope might be a heretic; and that, being such, he might be held accursed for it: and in Conc. Si that time there was not any one that suggested, that either he nuess. An. could not fall into heresy, since our Saviour had prayed that -tom. 1. St. Peter's faith might not fail; or that, if he had fallen into it, he must be left to the judgment of God; but that the holy see (according to the fable of P. Marcellin) could be judged by no body. The confusions that followed for some ages in the western parts of Europe, more particularly in Italy, gave occasion to the bishops of Rome to extend their authority.

303.

Conc.

The emperors at Constantinople, and their exarchs at Ravenna, studied to make them sure to their interests, yet still asserting their authority over them. The new conquerors studied also to gain them to their side; and they managed their matters so dexterously, that they went on still increasing and extending their authority; till being much straitened by the kings of the Lombards, they were protected by a new conquering family, that arose in France in the eighth century; who, to give credit both to their usurpation of that crown, and to the extending their dominions into Italy, and the assuming the empire of the west, did both protect and enrich them, and enlarged their authority; the greatness of which they reckoned could do them no hurt, as long as they kept the confirmation of their election to themselves. That family became quickly too feeble to hold that power long, and then an imposture was published, of a volume of the Decretal Epistles of the popes of the first ages, in which they were represented as acting according to those high claims. to which they were then beginning to pretend. Those ages were too blind and too ignorant to be capable of searching critically into the truth of this collection; it quickly passed for current; and though some in the beginning disputed it, yet that was soon borne down, and the credit of that work was established. It furnished them with precedents that they were careful enough not only to follow, but to outdo. Thus a work, which is now as universally rejected by the learned men of their own body as spurious, as it was then implicitly taken for genuine, gave the chief foundation during many ages to their unbounded authority: and this furnishes us with a very just prejudice against it, that it was managed with so much fraud and imposture; to which they added afterwards much cruelty and violence; the two worst characters possible, and the least likely to be found joined with infallibility: for it is reasonable enough to apprehend, that, if God had lodged

XIX.

such a privilege any where, he would have so influenced those ART. who were the depositaries of it, that they should have арpeared somewhat like that authority to which they laid claim; and that he would not have forsaken them so, that for above eight hundred years the papacy, as it is represented by their own writers, is perhaps the worst succession of men that is to be found in history.*

But now to come more close, to prove what is here asserted in this part of the Article. If all those doctrines which were established at Trent, and that have been confirmed by popes, and most of them brought into a new creed, and made parts of it, are found to be gross errors; or if but any one of them should be found to be an error, then there is no doubt to be made but that the church of Rome hath erred; so the proof brought against every one of these is likewise a proof against their infallibility. But I shall here give one instance of an error, which will not be denied by the greater part of the church of Rome. They have now for above six hundred years asserted, that they had an authority over princes, not only to convict and condemn them of heresy, and to proceed against them with church-censures; but that they had a power to depose them, to absolve their subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and to transfer their dominions to such persons as should undertake to execute their sentences. This they have often put in execution, and have constantly kept up their claim to it to this day. It will not serve them to get clear here, to say, that these were the violent practices of some popes: what they did in many particular instances may be so turned off, and left as a blemish on the memories of some of them.

The ancient canons are more reverently regarded in the church of England, than in the church of Rome; for how well you have observed them in former ages, let your own Baronius testify. "How foul (saith he) was then the face of the holy Roman church, when most potent, and withal most filthy, harlots did bear all the sway at Rome? at whose lust sees were changed, bishops appointed, and (which is horrible to be heard, and not to be uttered) whose lovers, the false popes, were thrust into the seat of Peter, which were not to be written in the catalogue of the Roman bishops, but only for the noting of the times: for who may say they were lawful popes which were thus, without right, thrust in by such strumpets? No where we find any mention of clergy choosing, or giving consent afterward; all canons were put to silence; the pontifical decrees were choked, ancient traditions proscribed, and the old customs, sacred rites, and former use in choosing the high bishop, utterly extinguished." And for later times, your own learned friends also complain as followeth. Budeus: "The holy canons and rules of church discipline, made in better times to guide the life of clergymen, are now become leaden rules, such as Aristotle saith the rules of Lesbian buildings were. For as leaden and soft rules do not direct the building with an equal tenor, but are bowed to the building at the lust of the builders; so are the popes' canons made flexible as lead or wax, that now this great while the decrees of our ancestors, and the popes' canons, serve not to guide men's manners, but (that I may so say) to make a bank and get money." Francescus de Victoria, doctor of the chair at Salamantica in Spain: We see daily so large, or rather so dissolute dispensations proceed from the court of Rome, that the world cannot endure them. Neither is it only to the offence of the little ones, but of the great ones also. No man seeketh a dispensation but he obtaineth it: yea, at Rome there are which give attendance to see if any be willing to crave dispensation of all things established by law; all that crave it have it." Mason: On the Orders of the Church of England.—[ED.]

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Dictat. Papæ. Epist.

ART. But the point at present in question is, whether they have not XIX. laid claim to this, as a right belonging to their see, as a part of St. Peter's authority descended to them? whether they have not founded it on his being Christ's vicar, who was the 'King of kings, and Lord of lords; to whom all power in heaven and in earth was given?' Whether they have not founded Greg. VII. lib. ii. it on Jeremy's 'being set over nations and kingdoms, to root Post. Epist. out, pluck down, and to destroy?' and on other places of scrip55. in Act. ture; not forgetting, that the first words of the Bible are, Concil. et In the beginning, and not 'In the beginnings; from which they inferred, that there is but one principle, from whence all is derived: and that God made two great lights, the power tif. tom. vi, sun to rule by day;' which they applied to themselves. Par. 1714. This, I say, is the question: Whether they did not assume Extravag. this authority as a power given them by God? As for the et Obed. applying it to particular instances, to those kings and empelib. i. c. 1. rors whom they deposed, that is, indeed, a personal thing, whether they were guilty of heresy, or of being favourers of it, or not? And whether the popes proceeded against them with too much violence or not?

cret. ac Constitut. Sum. Pon

de Major.

3. cap. 27.

6

The point now in question is, Whether they declared this to be a doctrine, that there was an authority lodged with their see for doing such things, and whether they alleged scripture and tradition for it?*

Now this will appear evident to those who will read their Conc. Lat. bulls: in the preambles of which those quotations will be Con. Lat. found, as some of them are in the body of the canon law; and 4. Can. 3. it is decreed in it, that the belief of this is absolutely necessary Con. Lug. to salvation.

Card. Per

General

This was pursued in a course of many ages. councils, as they are esteemed among men, have concurred with the popes both in general decrees asserting this power to be in them, and in special sentences against princes: this became the universally received doctrine of those ages: No ron Ha university nor nation declaring against it; not so much as one rangue au divine, civilian, canonist, or casuist, writ against it, as Card. tiers estat. Perron truly said. It was so certainly believed, that those writers, whom the deposed princes got to undertake their defence, do not in any of their books pretend to call the doctrine in general in question.

Two things were disputed: one was, Whether popes had a direct power in temporals over princes; so that they were as much subject to them as feudatory princes were to their superior lords? This, to which Boniface the Eighth laid claim, was indeed contradicted. The other point was, Whether those particulars for which princes had been deposed, such as the giving the investiture to bishoprics, were heresies or not? This was much contested: but the power, in the case

The reader will find this question very fully and ably discussed in the Introduction to Barrow's Treatise of the Pope's Supremacy.'-[ED.]

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