66

66

66

66

'the main, were doubtless pious men: but it is incredible that so many holy and approved men, -assembled from all parts of the Christian world, (who, how defective soever in any other sort of knowledge, could by no means be ignorant of the "first and fundamental doctrine of the holy Trinity, a doctrine wherein the very catechumens were not uninstructed, or of what themselves had received from their predecessors concerning it,) should wickedly conspire amongst themselves, to new "model the faith received in the church concerning "this principal article of Christianity c." And, indeed, all these things considered and laid together, it was morally impossible that the Nicene Fathers should have erred, in the determination of the article before them. And that they did not actually err, I

66

c Idem vero Socrates ejusdem libri сар. IX. p. 31. reprehendit Sabinum quod non etiam secum reputaverit, ὡς εἰ καὶ ἰδιῶται ἦσαν οἱ τῆς συνόδου, κατελάμποντο δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ τῆς χάριτος τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος, οὐδαμῶς ἀστοχῆσαι τῆς ἀληθείας ἐδύναντο. i. e. eos, qui ad synodum illam convenerant, quamvis rudes essent atque imperiti, a Deo tamen et Spiritus S. gratia illustratos, nullatenus a veritate aberrare potuisse. Quippe sensisse videtur Socrates, concilio episcoporum vere universali semper adesse Spiritus Sancti gratiam illuminatricem, quæ ipsos ab errore, saltem in necessariis fidei articulis, liberos custodiat. Quam hypothesin si quis nolit admittere, poterit ad ipsum argumentatio Socratis ita institui ac formari : Patres Nicæni, ut imperiti et literarum rudes fuisse fingantur, pii tamen certe maximam partem fuere: incredibile autem est, tot viros sanctos et probatos, ex omnibus orbis Christiani regionibus convenientes, (qui qualicunque alias imperitia laboraverint, certe ignorare non poterant elementariam de SS. Trinitate doctrinam, etiam catechumenis tradi solitam, aut quid ipsi ea de re a majoribus accepissent,) nefarie conspirare potuisse ad hoc, ut receptam in ecclesia fidem, de primario Christianismi articulo, innovarent. VOL. II.

R

have sufficiently proved, in the bishop's own judgment, in the following treatise.

But suppose I were fully of Socrates's opinion, concerning the infallible assistance of the Holy Ghost attending every truly general council in matters of faith, I should be never the nearer to the communion of the church of Rome, as it is now subjected to the decrees of the Trent council. For as I afterwards add in the same preface, §. 8. "The assembly at "Trent is to be called by any other name, rather "than that of a general councild."

I proceed to the bishop's questions. He asks me "What I mean by the catholic church?" I answer : What I mean by the catholic church in the book which he all along refers to, I have already shewn, and the very title of the book sufficiently declares. If he asks me, What I mean by the catholic church, speaking of it as now it is? I answer: By the catholic church, I mean the church universal, being a collection of all the churches throughout the world, who retain the faith (aña) once delivered to the saints, Jude 3; that is, who hold and profess, in the substance of it, that faith and religion which was delivered by the apostles of Christ to the first original churches, according to Tertullian's rule before mentioned. Which faith and religion is contained in the holy Scriptures, especially of the New Testament, and the main fundamentals of it comprised in the canon or rule of faith, universally received throughout the primitive churches, and the profession thereof acknowledged to be a sufficient tes

d Tridentina conventio quidvis potius quam generale concilium dicenda est.

sera, or badge, of a catholic Christian. All the churches at this day which hold and profess this faith and religion, however distant in place, or distinguished by different rites and ceremonies, yea, or divided in some extra-fundamental points of doctrine, yet agreeing in the essentials of the Christian religion, make up together one Christian catholic church under the Lord Christ, the supreme Head thereof. The catholic church, under this notion, is not "a confused heap of societies, separated one "from another." But it seems, no other union of the church will satisfy the bishop, but a union of all the churches of Christ throughout the world under one visible head, having a jurisdiction over them all, and that head the bishop of Rome for the time being. But such a union as this was never dreamed of amongst Christians for at least the first six hundred years, as shall be shewn in its due place.

The catholic church, I believe, shall never totally fail, that is, Christianity shall never utterly perish from the face of the earth, but there shall be some to maintain and uphold it to the end of the world; although some of the ancient doctors of the church have given us a very tragical description of the state of the universal church of Christ, which shall be under the reign of the great Antichrist. But I know of no promise of indefectibility from the faith made to any particular church, no, not to the church of Rome itself. And if we may judge by the holy Scriptures, and by the doctrine and practice of the primitive catholic church, the present church of Rome hath already lamentably failed, and fallen into many dangerous and gross errors, as will by

and by appear. Now that church which hath already so far failed, why may she not utterly fail? If she be found but in one error, the infallible direction of her judgment, upon which her indefectibility from the faith must depend, is gone. and destroyed. I add, that divers eminente doctors, even of the Roman communion, have discovered out of the Apocalypse, that Rome itself shall at length become the seat of Antichrist. If so, where will the church of Rome then be?

But I wonder why monsieur de Meaux should ask me, Whether by the catholic church I mean the church of Rome or the church of England? He knows full well, I mean neither the one nor the other. For to say either of the church of Rome, or of the church of England, or of the Greek church, or of any other particular church, of what denomination soever, that it is the catholic or universal church, would be as absurd as to affirm that a part is the whole. And to be sure I never meant the church of Rome to be the catholic church exclusively to all other churches. I am so far from any such meaning, that my constant judgment of the church of Rome hath been, that if she may be allowed still to remain a part or member of the catholic church, (which hath been questioned by some learned men, upon grounds and reasons not very easy to be answered,) yet she is certainly a very unsound and corrupted one, and sadly degenerated from her primitive purity. This I must insist upon, and have obliged myself to prove; and I prove it thus:

II. The church of Rome hath quite altered the

Ribera et Viega in Apoc. xvii.

primitive ecclesiastical government, changed the primitive canon or rule of faith, and miserably corrupted the primitive Liturgy or form of divine worship.

1st. She hath quite altered the primitive ecclesiastical government, by erecting a monarchy in the church, and setting up her bishop as the universal pastor and governor of the whole catholic church, and making all other bishops to be but his vicars and substitutes, as to their jurisdiction.

For that the bishop of Rome had no such universal jurisdiction in the primitive times, is most evident from the sixth canon of the first Nicene council, occasioned, as it appears, by the schism of Meletius, an ambitious bishop in Egypt, who took upon him to ordain bishops there without the consent of the metropolitan bishop of Alexandria. The words of the canon are these: "Let the ancient customs pre"vailf that are in Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis, "that the bishop of Alexandria have the power over "them all, forasmuch as the bishop of Rome also "hath the like custom. In like manner, in Antioch, "and all other provinces, let the privileges be pre"served to the churches." From this canon it is plain, that the three metropolitan bishops, or primates, (they were not as yet, I think, called patriarchs,) of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch, had their distinct jurisdictions, each independent on the other; and that all other chief bishops or primates of provinces had the same privileges which are here confirmed to them. It is true, this canon doth not

* Τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω. [The words of this canon may be seen at p. 231 of this volume.] v. Can. Apost. 34. et Conc. Ephesin.

can. 8.