not deny but this practice of urging scripture was most frequent, and the truth most troubled hereby in the primitive church. If a man might ask you, where was this your supposed infallibility then? in the swaddling clouts or unborn? If then unborn, it is too young to make younger brethren of all congregations else; too young to cause Christian kings and emperors subject their crowns unto your upstart mitre: if then born, albeit but in its infancy, yet such an Herculean power as you profess yours to be, which puts an ovdev Téρav to all Christian men's thoughts in points of faith, (for to this purpose your controversors cite that place of scripture, as your Vulgar reads it, Verba sapientum sunt tanquam clavi in altum fixi per magistrorum consilium, conscripta et a pastore uno data; viz. the pope; istis amplius fili mi ne requiras,) might in all congruity have taken Hercules' motto for its word, Cunarum labor est angues superasse mearum: though it had lain then sleeping in the cradle, yet might it (were it such as you would make it) easily have crushed' this seed of serpents in the very nest wherein they bred, and not have suffered them to grow up to flying dragons, to pester the world far and near with their deadly poison. 2. I would have you here to consider this incongruity well, which I must further prosecute in the next dispute. You plead the necessity of your church's infallibility for composing all contentions and variety of opinions about scripture sense, and yet we evidently see, (which you cannot deny,) that such bitter contentions and dangerous varieties of opinions about scripture sense, were most rife, most eagerly prosecuted and maintained, when this title of your church's infalli-276 bility (if it were just) might have been best known and soonest assented unto. For sure the ancient Fathers i, who had learned Christian obedience, always ready to give honour where honour was due, would most willingly have acknowledged so absolute a sovereignty, and could have been glad to have used the benefits of it, to have spared themselves a great deal of trouble and pains, if it could have been proved then to have been such an excellent mean for allaying all contentions amongst the learned. The pope was much to blame to let Athanasius suffer such pains, exile, and abuse by the Arian faction in the defence of the truth, if his infallibility could have composed the quarrel. Austin i That the Fathers, if we take the literal, plain, grammatical sense of their words, attribute as much to scriptures as we do, our adversaries cannot deny. May we not then safely think they meant what their words naturally import? No; Valentian hath found out a mystical interpretation of them. Tom. 3. disp. 1. quæst. 1. punct. 7. parag. 5. Quemadmodum quando uni Personæ divinæ aliqua perfectio divinitatis absoluta tribuitur, intelligunt theologi, ah ejus perfectionis communione creaturas tantum excludi, non autem Personas alias divinas quæ sunt ejusdem naturæ: ita sancti Patres sicubi scripturæ authoritatem solam ad fidei quæstiones finiendas valere significant: ecclesiæ certe authoritatem, quam item pro divina habent, et quam ipsa nobis commendat scriptura, minime excludunt, sed alia sive testimonia, sive argumenta, quæ sint tantum humana. Nam si non ita intelligerent, profecto nunquam illi in controversiis fidei, ipsa per se authoritate ec clesiastica traditionis ad probandum uterentur. At utuntur ea ipsi frequentissime et utendum esse docent. As the non-consequence of this collection, so how far the Fathers did urge the church's authority, how the most pregnant speeches that can be found in any of their writings must be limited, will easily appear, if we consider the two former distinctions: the one between the infallible rule of faith, and the means or motives inducing us to believe: the other between that conditional assent, which in cases doubtful we must give to the visible church, and that absolute belief, which is only due unto scriptures: the Fathers used the church's authority against heretics as we do theirs against novelists, not as a rule whereby finally to examine or determine Divine truths, but as a curb to bridle presumptuous gainsaying opinions, generally received or supposed for true, by men of sincerity and skill in divine mysteries. hath been famous throughout all generations since, for his learned labours against the Pelagian heresy; Cyril for his accurate confutation of Nestorius; and yet the scripture was the best weapon they knew. Neither of them did ever appeal to the pope's infallibility; not the popes themselves, which then lived, would have used any other rule but scripture for their own defence. 3. Your usual argument is, that "unless God had left such an infallible authority as might take up all controversies, he had not sufficiently provided for his church." Then, by your consent, he left such an authority as was sufficient to perform this good service to it. To whom then did he commit it? To the see of Rome, say you. How chanceth it your fore-elders did not put it in practice, and make the power of it better known? This blame you cannot lay upon the Almighty; for he, for his part, (by your confession,) provided abundantly for the peace and quiet of his church. And yet it seems the church was ill provided for, when schisms and heresies sprung so fast. This therefore was your church's fault, that bore this spiritual sword in vain, and would not use it, when the Christian world stood most in need of it, for the final decision of controversies. So then although we should grant you, that your church had sometimes the birthright, amongst all the Israel of God; yet might we justly say of it, as old Israel said of Reuben his eldest son, Thy dignity is gone; and we were to seek this supreme authority (if God had given any such supremacy to any) in some other tribe which were likely to use it better. The more tives the 4. If you reply, Your church's authority in compos- excellent ing controversies amongst the learned hath been better prerogaknown since that flourishing age of learned and reli-277 gious Fathers; and since it hath been so well known Jesuits be stow upon their church, the make her her author and acknowledged, heresies have been more thin sown greater they than before: (few or none till Luther arose, daring to disgrace for confront the church or pope's authority with scripnot using ture:) you give us hereby just cause to suspect, that ity better, heresy had got the upper hand of truth, for the multiChristian tude of followers; that there had been a general comworld stood bination in falsehood till Luther brake it. For if sunneed of it. dry of the ancient heretics, with whose doctrine the when the most in primitive church was pestered, could under pretence of scripture have got into supreme authority, or have established their propositions, framed (as they thought out of God's word) with strength of temporal sword, as Mahomet did his; it were great simplicity to think, that they could not have been content to have let the scriptures sleep, or have threatened all with death and destruction that should have urged them to the prejudice of their opinions, especially of such opinions as did concern their dignity. For all falsehood and spiritual blindness hates this light, and could either wish it put out, or them utterly extinct that object it to them. As he that hath wound himself into another's inheritance by some quirk in law, or captious clause not well understood, would not be much offended to have all evidences of primary copies either burnt or buried, even that by which he got it, if it, upon better consideration or more indifferent hearing, were likely to overthrow his title. 5. And if we may guess at the course of Satan's policy, in watching his opportunities to effect his purpose, by the customary fashion of secular politicians (his scholars) in like cases; most probable it is, that after these broils of dissension about the gospel of peace, so frequent in the primitive church, the great calamities and bodily affliction which followed thereon, most men grew weary of their spiritual warfare, and became slothful in the search of scriptures, the only armoury for all munition in this kind of war. Every man afterwards, in the fresh memory of the church their mother's bleeding wounds, and the desolation which had ensued these furious broils, became more tractable to entertain conditions of peace; and Satan himself, who had sown the seeds of all the former dissension, after he saw all or most weary of war, was content to turn peacemaker for his own advantage. These were as the first preparations for laying the foundations of the mystical Babel k, in whose erection the manner, method, and circumstances of the former's dissolution are all inverted. The building of the first was hindered by the confusion of tongues, or the division of one language into many, whence issued the scattering of the people throughout the earth1: the second was finished by the concourse of diverse people, and the composition or confusion of different languages. For (as Goropius m acutely observes) the present temper of modern Italian, Spanish, French (we may add of our English) dialects, was from the mixture of the Roman and barbarous tongues, whilst the natural inhabitants of these countries, (before accustomed to the 278 Roman language,) and the barbarians which at that k Roma Babel rediviva, the mystical Babel raised by compounding those elements whereinto old Babel was resolved. The dissolution of the one and the erection of the other differing but as the resolution of quicksilver into fume, and the conversion of it again into quicksilver. The city of Babylon likewise (as shall, God willing, elsewhere appear) was the true type of Rome; the one, as St. Austin compareth them, being the mo ther, the other the daughter, 1 Gen. xi. 7. m In the beginning of his Hermathena. |