cluded by them, as far as our Church, in the imposition of them, intended we should. 2. That as for those Articles of religion which our Church proposeth to all her sons, (without exception,) to be professed by them as points undoubtedly delivered in Scripture, and contained in the ancient creeds, and acknowledged by the Catholic Church in all ages, she hath taken care (as far as a Church can possibly) to prevent any the least prevarication from them, by enjoining every one of us to make an open and solemn profession of them (in our Service and public Liturgy) before the face of the congregation, and in the presence of Almighty God.

XXXII. Let us now briefly consider how this charge of prevarication, objected by the author of the Letter against us, will return very heavily upon the men of his own Church. It is very manifest that divers, living in the communion of the Church of Rome, and professing themselves Roman Catholics, have most egregiously prevaricated from the articles of the Roman faith. The articles of the Roman faith, did I say? I confess it is very hard, if not impossible, to define what they are, or to draw up such a body of articles as shall be acknowledged for a standard of the Roman faith by all that profess themselves to be of that religion. This is so true, that I do solemnly profess, if I had any mind to be a Roman Catholic, (which, God be thanked, I have not,) I could not certainly tell how to be, or when I might be assured that I am such, unless I could persuade myself to the smutty faith of the collier, to believe as the Church doth, without knowing what it is that the Church believeth, or what is that Church which so believes as I profess myself to do. But let us follow them as far as we can in their labyrinth. There are certain points received as articles of faith at Rome, (and a man would be there accounted no Roman Catholic that should deny them,) which yet are openly denied by some that profess themselves Roman Catholics. I instance only in two; the personal infallibility of the Pope, and his superiority to a General Council. As for the first, our countryman, Mr. White, (a learned Roman Catholic, and one who hath many followers, and leaders too,) is so far from acknowledging the personal

infallibility of the Pope, that he affirms the holding of it to be an arch-heresy, and the propagating of that doctrine to be a grievous sing. (And sure I am the doctors of the Sorbonne were formerly of the same mind with Mr. White, and I believe are so still.) And I myself have met with some Papists, who have plainly derided the doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Pope, and not without great indignation disowned it to be an article of their faith. As for the latter point, concerning the superiority of the Pope to a General Council, all those who disown the former must reject this also. For the Pope cannot be imagined superior to a General Council upon any other account than this, that he is guided (at least when he sits in his enchanted chair) by an infallible spirit, to judge of the determinations of General Councils, whether they are true or false, and, accordingly, to confirm or reject them. Yet this point must be held by all that own the Council of Florence, or the confession of faith according to the Council of Trent: for in both of them it is determined, that the Pope, or Bishop of Rome, is the pastor, governor, and head of the universal Church, which cannot be true if the Pope be subject to the universal Church, represented by her Bishops in a General Council. Hence Gregory of Valence', a learned Papist, speaking of those that held a General Council to be superior to the Pope, saith, "that they did indeed plainly thwart (though unawares) the most certain faith concerning St. Peter and the Bishop of Rome's primacy in the Church." Indeed they that do, seem to forget their very name of Papists, which was given them from their dependance on the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ, the head of the Church, and the infallible judge of all controversies. This, then, must be held as an undoubted article of faith, and the very foundation of the Roman Catholic religion, That the Pope is superior to a General Council. Now from this great article of faith, not only Mr. White, and the per

Tabulæ Suffrag. c. 19-21. Vide et Holdeni Divinæ Fidei Analysim, p. 179. [1. i. c. 9. p. 235.]

h Vide Caranz. Sum. Concil. Florent. et Synod. ann. 1439, p. 655, 676. [p. 864.]

Atque hinc profecto illorum auctorum sententia manifeste revincitur, qui

concilium universale pontifice superius faciunt. Pugnant enim illi revera (licet non advertentes) cum certissima fide de D. Petri ac Romani Pontificis in Ecclesia primatu. Gregor. de Valent. Com. Theolog., tom. iii. disp. I. qu. 1. punct. 7. [p. 272.]

sons but now mentioned, but also divers other Roman Catholics of a higher rank, have egregiously prevaricated. We have a numerous assembly of many hundreds of Bishops, called together by the emperor Sigismund at Constance, determining point-blank against this great article: for in the fourth session they define, "That the Synod, lawfully gathered together in the Holy Ghost, and making a General Council, and representing the Catholic Church militant, hath a power immediately from Christ, to which every man, of whatsoever state or dignity, though it be the Pope himself, is bound to yield obedience," &c. And presently after they decree, "That if any man, though he were the Pope himself, should refuse to obey the decrees of this Synod, or any other General Council lawfully gathered together, he should do penance, and suffer condign punishment." And about sixteen years after, the Council of Basil' (in the second session) decreed the same thing in the very same words. Nay, in the third session, they determined this to be “a Catholic verity, and that whosoever should oppose it should be accounted a heretic." It is to no purpose here to answer, (as Bellarmine and others have done,) that these Councils were no lawful Councils, as not confirmed by the Pope. For supposing this to be true, (which certainly is most false, and it may be easily evinced that each of those Councils was confirmed by a Pope,) yet still it is confessed, both that these Bishops (which were well nigh all the Bishops of the western Churches) were of the Roman Catholic religion and communion, and that they did so determine as we have said. Let me now ask the author of the Letter this question, Was the superiority of the Pope to a General Council an article of faith in the time of the Council of Constance and Basil, or not? If it was, then here we have the Roman Catholic Bishops generally guilty of prevarication from an article of faith, and that the main article of the Roman Catholic religion. And then, what is become of that uninterrupted succession of Pastors (which the author of the Letter so much boasts of) in the Roman Church, always holding the same articles of religion? If it was not then held for an article of

k Caranz. Summ. Concil. Constant. sess. 4, 5. p. 647, 648. [p. 826.]

1 Caranz. Summ. Concil. Bas. p. 665, 672. [p. 848, 9.]

K

faith, as it is manifest enough it was not, from the testimony of so many Bishops, then are they guilty of a grievous prevarication, who have since made that an article of faith which was not so before, but rather was held to be an error, yea, a downright heresy. So that, on the one side or the other, here must of necessity be acknowledged a very lamentable prevarication from a great fundamental article of the Roman faith.

XXXIII. But let us come more closely to that standard of the Roman faith, which I am assured the author of the Letter acknowledgeth for such; viz. The decrees of the Council of Trent. It is well known, that a great number of those that call themselves Roman Catholics, are so far from being concluded by the decrees of that Council, that they utterly reject the authority thereof, accounting it as an unlawful and irregular Convention. And yet the author of the Letter dares not (I am sure) pronounce all these to be heretical; and as for those that profess to submit themselves to the authority of that Council, how egregiously have many of them prevaricated from the canons and decrees thereof!

If the gentleman hath been so little conversant in the authors of his own Church as to deny this, I will undertake to prove it by the clearest evidences, even by the confession of Papists themselves. But that which I chiefly insist on, (to shew the prevarication of the Trent Papists,) is this, that no man can make profession of his faith, according to the Council of Trent, without being guilty, in that very profession, of prevarication in the highest degree, even to perjury. For your ladyship may please to understand, that the confession of faith, according to the Council of Trent, is made with a solemn oath; now in this confession, I. They swear "to receive as undoubted all things delivered, defined, and declared, by the Canons and General Councils, and especially by the holy Council of Trentm." Now, any understanding man, that impartially reads the canons and the decrees of those Councils, acknowledged for general by the Papists, will find it impossible to reconcile them one to another. II. They

In Omnia a sacris canonibus et œcumenicis Conciliis, ac præcipue a sacrosancta Synodo Tridentina tradita, defi

nita, ac declarata, indubitanter recipio ac profiteor.

swear with the same breath wherewith they profess their reception of all the Canons and General Councils, that "they acknowledge the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome to be the mother and mistress of all other Churches, and the Pope to be successor of St. Peter, the prince of the Apostles, and to be also the Vicar of Jesus Christ, to whom our obedience is due","

Now it is very manifest that the first and most famous General Council of Nice, in the sixth canon, decrees, That every Patriarch, within his province, hath full and perfect jurisdiction, without any dependance upon the Church or Bishop of Rome, or any other Church or Bishop; and that the jurisdiction of the Church and Bishop of Rome is no less limited than that of other Churches and Patriarchs. Let any man compare the words of the canon with the usual answers given by the Papists, and (if he does not wink very hard) he must needs see what wretched shifts a bad cause will put men

to.

Other instances I might give your ladyship of the apparent contradictions of that Confession; but these are sufficient to shew that every man, who swears to the Confession of Trent, must necessarily be a perjured person, either knowingly and wittingly, or ignorantly and unadvisedly; and the best of these two sorts of perjury is bad enough. And now I leave it to your ladyship to judge who are the prevari

cators.

XXXIV. Thus I have largely examined every thing in the Letter, that seemed to me any way worthy of answer. What follows in the close, is nothing else but a bundle of specious words, which I know your ladyship to be too wise to be deceived by. Only I cannot but take notice how enthusiastical and perfectly fanatical his discourse is concerning faith and conversion. He tells your ladyship very gravely, that true faith is the immediate gift of God. But a graver

n Sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam Romanam Ecclesiam omnium Ecclesiarum matrem et magistram agnosco: Romanoque Pontifici B. S. Petri Apostolorum principis successori, ac Jesu Christi Vicario, veram obedientiam spondeo ac juro.

• Τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω, τὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, καὶ Λιβύῃ, καὶ Πενταπόλει,

ὥστε τὸν ἐν ̓Αλεξανδρεία ἐπίσκοπον πάντων τούτων ἔχειν τὴν ἐξουσίαν· ἐπειδὴ καὶ τῷ ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ ἐπισκόπῳ τοῦτο σύνηθές ἐστιν· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ κατὰ τὴν ̓Αντιόχειαν, καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις ἐπαρχίαις, τὰ πρεσβεία σώζεσθαι ταῖς EKKλnolais. Justell. Codex Can, Ecclesiæ Univers. p. 30, 31. [p. 6.]