Against the Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction, Part 2 · Chapter 5
Chap. V. What a Foreign Jurisdiction by Councils or the College of Bishops is, the Mask being taken off.
MEthinks Princes and States, and Churches, should not be cheated into a state of Subjection without ever considering or examining what it is: And methinks no honest Bishops should be unwilling that it be truely understood.
I. Consider what an Universal Legislative Power includeth. It plainly implyeth the insufficiency of Gods Words and Laws to those Ends for which this power is pretended. Whereas this is the very point of the Protestant Cause as differenced from Popery, that God being the only Ruler of the whole World none else can make Laws for the whole, but only such By Laws for their particular Provinces (as Corporations do under the King) for undetermined Circumstances, in which Kingdoms and Churches may freely differ.
II. By this the Peace of the Christian World will be laid on these variable Circumstances: As if all the World were bound to wear such Garments as France or England wear, &c.
III. By this the Legislative Power of every Kingdom is taken away in all matters of Religion (which are our greatest things:) For it is the summa potestas only that hath the Legislative Power: At least no Inferior hath any but from and under the Supreme; nor may contradict them. VVhereas even the Decrees of our National Clergy are no Laws with us, till the King shall make them Laws.
IV. By this no Man can tell what degree of Power these Foreigners will assume: As the Popes Ecclesiastical Power is now extended to Testaments, Matrimony, Adulteries, Church Lands, &c. Among Christians to whom all things are sanctified, they may challenge almost all. And when it becomes a Controversie who shall judge? Certainly the Supreme Power is the Supreme Judge of their own Rights.
V. I think it will oblige Kings, Lords and all, when Summoned to Travel out of their own Kingdoms as Malefactors to answer what accusations are brought against them. For certainly a Supreme Judicature must have its Forum, where men must be heard before they are Judged, and where all that are Summoned must answer. Or else Kings and Kingdoms must become poor Subjects to any Fellow that the Foreign Soveraign will make his Chancellor or Legate.
VI. VVho knoweth not how much the Government and Peace of the State will depend on the Government of such an Universal Church Governor? VVhen they have Excommunicated the King, will not the Subjects the more dishonour him, if they take the Excommunicators Power to be Supreme? What work hath the Pope made by Excommunications? Kingdoms have been engaged in War by it against each other? Yea Subiects against their Kings? Yea Sons have deposed their Fathers, as the Emperor Henry's Case acquaints us. Yea when the Pope hath not medled, Bishops Councils have basely deposed the best of Kings, as Ludov. Pius Case tells us, and the Empress Maud's in England, &c. In ad ordine Spiritualia all will fall into the Foreign Soveraigns hands. They must be the Soul, and Kings but the Body.
VII. It will unavoidably follow that Kings and Kingdoms must be subjected to Foreign Princes by this pretence of a Foreign Church Jurisdiction. For he knoweth little of the World that knoweth not that to be true which Dr. Peter Heylin (on the Creed; of the Cath. Church) citeth out of Socrates, that since Emperors were Christians all things depended on their beck or will: Will not they chuse Bishops or Rule in the choice? Will not they over-rule the choice of such as are to be sent to General Councils; as King James chose the Six that went hence to Dort? Is it not known that it is the Excellency and Merit of our Clergy to be obedient to the Kings Will? And is it not so in the rest of the VVorld? Therefore those Princes that can command the greatest number of Bishops, will be Governors of all the rest of the VVorld, both over their Souls and Bodies.
VIII. I desire it may be well considered whether the Government of all Kings, for Soul and Body, will not fall into the hands of Mahometans and Infidels, or at least the contest prove hard between them and the Papists. For it is no small number of Bishops that are in the Mahometans Dominions? Turks, Moors, Persians, Indians, &c. And if they know once the advantage of numbers they can make more when they will: Even one to every Christian Congregation. And as Ludolphus tells us of the Patriarch of Alexandria, that any ignorant sorry Fellow gets the place, that can purchase it by Favour and Money of the Turks, so it is at Constantinople as to the over-ruling of the Choice.
But that's not the worst: But by our Subjecters Principles the five Patriarchs have such a Power in Councils, that it's no Council without them, or the greater part of them. And four of the five Patriarchs are Subjects of the Turk, and the Pope is the fifth or first). And will not the Turk then choose them, and so be Master of our Religion, and of all the Christian World? Or if the Pope get the greater Number of Bishops the Matter will not be well amended; as the Trent Council hath assured us.
And when the Empire was over the West, the Emperor had a chief hand in choosing Popes: And who knows how soon it may be so again, and the new way of Cardinals be cast by? And so we shall be the Emperor's Subjects.
IX. We know already that the far greatest part of the Bishops of the World are lamentably Ignorant and Erroneous Men, and keep up Error and Divisions in their several Countries, viz. in Greece, Moscovie, Armenia, Syria, Abassia, &c. and in Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Germany, &c. And are we bound to obey them because they are the greater number? In Council or out of Council they are the same men. What Nation under Heaven hath Bishops just of the Mind of these with us in England? or so sound and judicious as ours have been, and some yet are? And must our English Bishops give up their Judgments to an erroneous. Majority abroad? Is that our thankfulness to God?
X. How little difference is it to us, whether e. g. Image-worship, Transubstantiation or any Sin be commanded us by a Council, or by the Pope? or by him as Absolute or as Patriarch of the West, and Principium Vnitatis?
XI. What can a Principium Unitatis signifie in the Universal Church, but some Governing Power and Unifying Prerogative? Who but the King can be Principium Vnitatis in the Kingdom? The Question will not be whether the Pope shall be the Universal Monarch, but only whether this Monarch's Power be Absolute and Total, or Limited and Partial with his Council. And Church-Monarchs that have these Thousand Years conquered Church-Parliaments already may do so still.
XII. If the Pope have not the Universal Supreme Government in the Intervals of Councils there will be none. And if there have been none these Thousand Years (which must follow their Opinion that end it as the Sixth Council) why should it be new made now?
XIII. We know already that Grotius and his Party are for the Popes Government in chief in the Intervals of Councils; but not Arbitrarily, but by the Canons. And I have after named you a multitude of Canons already, which we cannot lawfully obey.
XIV. It will make an endless Controversie in the World, what Councils shall be approved and obeyed, and which not.
XV. If the Pope must preside, he will have it near him: He will not Travel to Syria or Armenia, &c. but they must come to him: And whereever the Council is called, the nearest Bishops will carry it by numbers against the remote, who will be few.
XVI. None can expect that the Pope as Patriarch and Principium Vnitatis, will do his part for nothing: And the riches of this Kingdom is little enough for the King, Clergy, and People. We cannot spare that which Foreigners will expect (and have done in this Land).
XVII. While the same Man that is here owned as Patriarch and Principium Vnitatis, is owned as of greater Power in Italy, Spain, Germany, and other Lands, he will be strengthened to bring us to Conformity with the rest; and in time to obtain all his claim.
XVIII. Are Strangers like to be fitter Judges of the Matters of England, Armenia, Habassia, &c. than the Rulers & Clergy of the several Kingdoms, who know the Persons they must Judge, and can hear both sides speak, and examine Witnesses? &c.
XIX. The old and famous General Councils were not called to Govern Foreigners and all the World, but only the Empire that called them: And why should the Church Government now be any other, than Collateral with the Civil.
XX. I again and again say, that we are Sworn by the Oath of Supremacy against all Foreign Jurisdiction. And by the Corporation Act, the Vestry Act, the Act of Uniformity, the Militia Act, and the Oxford Oath, the Church and Kingdom is most solemnly bound, never to endeavour any Alteration of Government in Church or State: And if subjecting King, Kingdom, and Church to a Foreign Jurisdiction, of such as pretend to an Universal Supreme Legislative and Judicial Power, be not an Alteration of the Government of Church and State, I know not what is: Nor what is National Perjury if the National Endeavour or Consent to such Subjection be not such.
Add to all this the unavoidable effects of this Opinion of the Universal Soveraignty, viz. 1. It engageth the Owners of it to condemn all the Protestant Churches, because they own no Universal Soveraign, nor the Pope as Patriarch or Principium Unitatis: yea, and to disown almost all the Churches of the World besides the Papists, as Schismatical.
2. They must Condemn all the Protestant Martyrs who rejected the Pope absolutely, as dying for Rebellion.
3. They must needs censure their own Princes and States as Rebels, who subject not themselves to this Usurped Soveraignty.
4. They will pervert all the Scriptures for Unity, and Peace, and Obedience, and interpret it, as meaning this Usurpation.
5. They will think it their Duty to use their best Endeavour to subject all Men to the Usurpers.
6. They will lose their due Charity to all that Consent not to this Subjection, taking them for Enemies to the Churches Unity and Peace, and Rebels against this Soveraign Power.
7. No wonder if such become grievous Persecutors, and stir up Princes and Rulers against such Christians as Schismaticks and Enemies of Peace; And as Dr. Saywell and Bishop Guning tell the World, that the meeting of such in worshipping God are the Conventicles of Schismaticks, and the Cause of all our Plots and Divisions. And if Obedience to this Vniversal Soveraignty be (as they say) the only Cure of Schism, they must hold all our Parish Assemblies too to be Schismatical Conventicles, whose Pastors own not the Usurpation.
8. Thus as the Pope hath been the grand Divider of the Christian World, by setting up a false Head of Union, so will these Men destroy all Unity quantum in se by setting up a Usurped Soveraignty, and a false Principium Vnitatis; and will be the grand Schismaticks to cure Schism.
9. They will by a false uncertain Universal Law-making, not only make Christ's Laws insufficient, but make Christianity a mutable, growing, uncertain thing; when no man shall be able to know which are the Church Laws, and when the Volumes of them will be perfected, and no more added.
10. When the Churches are thus Divided and Persecuted, and sound Preachers Silenced, the Persecutors will be hardened in impenitency, fathering all their Mischiefs on Christ which they do against him, and making Christian Fidelity odious as Rebellion and Schism.
And they will never be able in their way, so much as to satisfie impartial men, how true Bishops may be known, and who ad esse must be the Choosers of them; much less prove their Universal Soveraignty.