Which is the True Church, Part 1 · Chapter 7
CHAP. VII. What mean you by [SCHISME.]
W. J. I understand by Schism, a wilful separation, or division of ones self from the whole visible Sect. 1.Church of Christ.
R. B. If this only be Schism it's comfortable news to many a thousand and million that some call Schismaticks. I hope then there are no Schismaticks in England, of those that are called Presbyterians, Erastians, Independents, Separatists, or Anabaptists: For I know not one of these that separateth from the whole visible Church of Christ. But I doubt with these Judges the Church of Rome goes for the whole visible Church of Christ. I asked here.
Q. 1. Is it no Schism to separate from a particular Church, unless from the whole?Sect. 2.
W. J. No; it is no Schism, as Schism is taken in the Holy Fathers, for that great and Capital Crime, so severely censured by them, in which sense only I take it here.
R. B. 1. He first defineth without distinguishing, and then tells us that he means only one sort of Schism.
2. Let the Reader but peruse all the Texts of Scriptures which mention Schism, and see whether he will not find, that every Text, or almost every one, do use the Word only of Divisions made in the Church, rather than of dividing, or separating from the Church; and whether such separating from the whole Church, be not there called Heresie rather than Schism.
But seeing it is only this Capital Schism that he calleth by that name, I have no mind to draw him now to more censoriousness, and therefore I noted how by this he absolveth the Protestants from the guilt of Schism.
W. J. Did not your first Protestants in Germany separate as much from the Armenians, Ethiopians, Sect. 3.Greeks, as they did from the Romans? If they did not, shew the Communion they had with them.
R. B. Very willingly, Sir: They had the same God, the same Saviour, the same Spirit, the same Faith, Baptism and Hope, and so were of the same Body of Christ, which is all the Union predicated by St. Paul, Eph. 4. 3, 4, 5, 6. They had also the same Scriptures, the same Rule of Prayer and Practice, (the Lord's Prayer. and the Decalogue and Precepts of Christ, as well as the same Creed) the same Love, the same Sacrament of the Eucharist, Prayses of God, the Lords day for Holy Communion, Pastors of the same Order, and had no other Diversities in such things than St. Paul tells us are in the Body of Christ, 1 Cor. 12. Is this no Communion?
W. J. Did your Ministers first take either Mission or Iurisdiction to preach, from any of their Sect. 4.Bishops or Patriarchs? Did they take the prescription of their Liturgies, Discipline or Hierarchy from them? Did they upon occasion joyn in Prayer, Sacraments or Sacrifice with them?
R. B. 1. Do we hold Communion with none that we take not Mission and Iurisdiction from? What Absurdities do you thrust upon us? Did the Churches of Ephesus, Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Colosse, &c. hold no Communion in Scripture-times, unless they had Mission and Iurisdiction from each other? Must the Greeks and Armenians have Mission, &c, from us? If not, why must we have it from them? Your Church receiveth no Mission or Jurisdiction from others. Have you therefore no Communion with them? Your Language favoureth of so much Tyranny and Pride, as would tempt Men indeed to take you for Anti-christian: As if Subjection to you, and Communion with you, were all one; or you would have Communion with no Christians in the World, b…n the relation of Servants or Subjects to you.
2. When we have Qualification, Election, and (where it may be had) due Ordination, we know of no other Mission necessary, besides Gods own Word which chargeth Christ's Ministers to preach the Gospel, in season and out of season, &c. God's charging all Ministers to preach, is their Mission when they are Ministers: Princes leave, and Peoples consent, do give them their opportunity; and for Jurisdiction, we need and desire none but a Ministerial Power of guiding Souls towards Heaven by God's Word, preached and applyed: And he that ordaineth a Minister, thereby giveth him all the Jurisdiction which is necessary to his Office. If a Man be licensed a Physitian, must he have also Mission and Iurisdiction given him after, before he may practice?
3. How could we take Ordination, Mission and Jurisdiction, from Men on the other side of the World? What need we go so far for it when the Gospel is near us, which telleth us how God would have Ministers more easily called than so?
4. And as for the prescript of our Liturgy, Discipline and Hierarchy, that is one of the differences between us and you: Must you needs have a Liturgy, Discipline and Hierarchy of Man's forming? so you have: But we can live in Christian Communion with so much as Christ and his Apostles by his Spirit have prescribed us. Is there no Communion to be had with any Church, but that which hath arrived at that heighth of Pride as to make Liturgies, Discipline, and Hierarchy for all the Chrstian World; and to suffer none to speak publickly to God, in any words but those which they write down for them to read to God? We make no such Laws to any other Church in the World, nor do we receive any such Laws from any; and yet we have Communion with them, fraternal and not subjective Communion. There is one Law-giver who is able to save and to destroy; who are you that make Laws for another's Servants and judge them? Had the Churches no Communion for the first 400 years when no Liturgies were imposed? or when the first Law made hereabout was, but that no one should use a Form of Prayer till he had shewed it to the Synod? No nor when Gregory's and Ambrose's Liturgies were striving for pre-eminence? Had the Church at Neocesaria no Communion with that at Caesarea, because they had so different Liturgies, as their quarrel against Basil intimateth? And when every Bishop used what Liturgy he pleased in his own Congregation, Was there then no Communion between the Churches? We refuse not any meet Liturgy that is found needful to our Concord: But truly for Hierarchy and Species or Forms of Churches, and the substantials of Discipline, we earnestly wish that no Church had any but what God hath himself prescribed to them.
5. But how should we joyn with Men many hundred or thousand miles off us in Word and Sacraments, otherwise than by useing those of the same species? We do not locally hold such Communion with the next Parishes to us, nor with many in the World; for we cannot be in many places at once, much less can we be every Lords day in every Assembly in Ethiopia and Armenia.
As for [Sacrifice] we know of none acceptable but the Commemmoration of Christ's Sacrifice, once offered for Sin, and the offering of our selves and our Thanksgivings, praise, and other duties to God: And why you distinguish the first from Sacraments I know not.
W. J. A…d did they profess the same Faith in all points of Faith, and those the very same Sect. 5.wherein they dissented from the Church of Rome?
R. B. 1. Ad hominem, it might suffice to say to you, that explicitely or implicitely they did. 2. But I better answer you, We profess the same Faith in all points essential to Christianity, and in abundance more: I have told you before that we agree in all the Old Creeds, and in the truth of the Canonical Scriptures. 3. But do you Papists agree in all points of Faith? no not by a thousand: For all is of Faith which God hath intelligibly revealed in the Holy Scriptures to be believed: But there is above a thousand intelligible Texts of Scripture about the sence of which your Commentators differ. If all Christians agree in all that is de fide, then all Christians fully understand every intelligible Word in the Scripture: And then every Woman and Rustick is as wise in Divinity as the greatest Doctors; (yea far are the Doctors from such Wisdom.)
W. J. If so, they may as well be said not to have separated fom the external Communion of Sect. 6.the Roman Church.
R. B. Some will tell you that we did not separate from you, but you from us; but I must say, that the Roman Church is considered either materially as Christians, and a part of the Church of Christ, and so we neither did nor do separate from you; or else formally as P…pal; and so we renounce you, and all Communion with you, as being no Church of Christ, but a Sect that treasonably usurpeth his Prerogative: The pars imperans specifieth or informeth the society: Christ only is the Universal Head of all Christians as such, and of all the Churches with which we profess Concord and Communion: In this Head Greeks, Armenians, Ethiopians, and Protestants unite. But the Pope, falsly pretending to be Christ's Vicar-General, is taken for the Universal Head by the Papists: and, in renouncing this Head, we renounce no other Church but yours.
R. B. Not from you as Christians, but scandalous Offenders, whom we are commanded to avoid; we separate not from any but as they separate from Christ.
W. J. 1. No, sure, for if you did you must be Iews, Turks, or Infidels. 2. Was there Sect. 7.no more in it? Did not the Primitive Persons, who begun your breach and party, owe subjection to their respective Ecclesiastical Superiors, Diocesans and Pastors?
R. B. No, none at all as they were Papal, that is, the subordinate Ministers of the usurping Universal Bishop.
W. J. And is it lawful for a Subject to subtract himself from the obedience of a lawful Pastor because he is a scandalous Offender?
R. B. Yes, if his Offence be a ceasing to be a lawful Pastor, and taking on him a false Office by usurpation: Or if he remained lawful, quoad hoc, as Christian, and adde a treasonable addition, we must have no Communion with him, at least in that unlawful part.
W. J. If you say he remaineth not in his former Power you contradict our Saviour, commanding Sect. 8.obedience to the scandalous Pharisees, &c.
R. B. 1. The Pharisees set not up a new usurped Office of Head-ship constitutive (pretendedly) to the Universal Visible Church; but only abused a lawful Office that God had made. 2. Yet Christ requireth obedience to them no farther than as they sate in Moses's Chair and delivered the Law; but warned men to renounce them as Corrupters, and to take heed of their Doctrine. 3. And this much was but till they shewed themselves uncurable, and he set up new Officers over his Church, and then all men were to forsake the Pharisees Government.
W. J. You destroy all Ecclesiastical Government, and open a way to tread under foot all temporal Authority: If you hold these Offences deprive him of all Ecclesiastical Power, why not so of Sect. 9.Kings, and Magistrates, and Parents, and then you have spun a fair Thread, &c.
R. B. Confusion may help to deceive the ignorant. 1. Your Popes, as Universal Bishops, had never true Power over us. 2. Nor any Bishops as their Ministers as such. 3. For this treasonable Usurpation we were bound to avoid them as scandalous Invaders of Christ's Prerogative, which some call Antichristian. 4. Our English Bishops, and other Pastors, when they came to see that such an Usurper had no right to govern them, forsook him, but forsook no Governour. 5. Those Bishops that adhered to him the People justly forsook as Usurpers under him. 6. Those that forsook him they obeyed as their true Pastors. And now will it follow, if I be obliged to renounce a Usurping Vice-King and Traytor, as having no power over me as such, and that I partake not of his Treason, that I must therefore forsake the King for his personal faults? If the Deputy of Ireland should say, I am Vice-King of all the Kings Dominions, and I challenge Obedience from all the Subjects, and the King forbid us to obey him as such, I may obey him in Ireland till the King depose him, and I must renounce him in England, and yet I must not tell the King; Sir, why must we not then for your faults also renounce you? The scandal of Treasonable Usurpation differeth from a meer immorality or miscarriage.
R. B. Qu. 2. Is it no Schism unless wilful?Sect. 10.
W. J. No.
R. B. Again, you further justifie us from Schism: If it be wilful it must be against knowledge; But we are so far from separating wilfully from the whole Church, that we abhor the thought of it, as impious and damnable.
W. J. Abhor is as much as you please, (for your own particular (I know not what may be pleaded for you) I am certain that your first beginners did it, and that knowingly and wilfully; and you, still maintaining what they began, must by all considering Christians, be judged guilty of the same Crime: for still you remain separate from all these Christians from which they departed, that is, from all the visible Churches existent immediately before they sprung up and in their time, and still continue through the whole World.
R. B. A naked, bold, and shameless assertion without one word of proof. Our Reformers knew no Head of the Church but Christ; and they neither renounced him nor any one Member of his Church as such, but only a Trayterous Usurper and his Sect; indeed while he claimed but as Patriarch some Government of them jure humano by the Will of Princes, they gave him answerable obedience, and in their ignorance most gave him too much, and many perceived not his Usurpation: But when the Empire was down that set him up, or had no power here, and their own Princes no longer obliged them hereto, he had not so much as such a humane Authority. And when they that renounced him as a Traytor to Christ, protested to hold Communion with all Christs Church on Earth according to their distant Capacities, and to abhor all separation from them; would not a man have expected that this Dispute should have given us some proof, that to forsake this false Head was to separate from all the visible Churches on Earth? I proved our Union with them before: Yea he presumes to say, That he is certain that they did it knowingly and wilfully: As if he knew all the hearts of thousands whose Faces he never saw; when they that should know them better thought that they were certain that they separated from no Christians, but an Usurper and his Adherents, as such. And this we have great reason to continue, as much as Subjects have to separate from Rebels.
R. B. Qu. 3. It is no Schism if men make a division in the Church, and not from the Church?
W. J. Not as we are here to understand it, and as the Fathers treat it: For the Church of Christ, being perfectly one, cannot admit of any proper Schism within it self; for that would Sect. 11.divide it into two, which cannot be.
R. B. 1. If there be other Schisms besides separating from the whole Church, why should you not here understand it? unless understanding things as they are will hurt your Cause?
2. What a stranger doth this Disputer make himself to the Fathers, if he know not that they frequently use the word Schism in another sense than his? I will not be so vain as to trouble my self or the Reader with Citations: The Indexes of the Fathers and Councils will satisfie those that will but search them: Was it a separation from the whole Church which Clemens Romanus, the eldest of them all, doth write his Epistle to the Corinthians against, or rather a particular Schism between the people and some few eminent men? Read it, and see what credit these men deserve when they talk of the Eathers Judgments.
3. But his reason is most unreasonable: That [the Church of Christ is so perfectly one, that it cannot admit of any proper Schism within it self.] Can the Unity be perfect while all our uniting Graces are imperfect? When every Member is imperfect in Knowledge, Faith, Love, (Holiness) Obedience, Iustice, Patience, &c. how can the Union be perfect?
4. Reader, do but read their Councils, Church-Histories, (Baronius, Genebrard, Plati…, Wernerus, to whom I may add above one hundred,) and if thou dost not find them, (and also their polemical and practical Divines) commonly mentioning [Schisms in the Church of Rome it self,] then believe these deceivers and call me the deceiver. Do they not lament their Schisms? Were not the Councils of Constance, Basil, Pisa, &c. called to heal them? Do they not number the Schisms that fell out in 40 or 50 years time and continued? Dare any man deny it?
Were these then Proper Schisms or not? No, it's like this man would say that none of these Writers speak properly when they call it Schism. I would he would tell in the next what proper word to use.
But either these Schisms were within the Church or without it. (Reader, see whither falshood will run at last) If they were within the Church, then W. I. doth but abuse you by his falshoods, If without the Church then one half the Roman Church was Unchurched for 40 or 50 years when they followed one Pope, while the other half followed another. And who knoweth which of these parts was the Church? It seems whoever adhered to the wrong Pope was none of the Church. But, saith Wernerus and other Historians, sometimes the wisest were at their Wits end, and knew not which was the true Pope, nor is it known to this day. Nay the matter is yet worse: A great General Council deposed Euginius the Fourth as no Pope, but an uncapable wicked Heretick, and yet he kept in, and became the only Head of their Church, whom the rest succeed. And so all that Church by this rule was unchurched. Sure necessity must make you recant, and say, that yet both Parties in your long and odious Schisms were within the Church, or else what a Wound will ye inflict on it? But an ill Cause will admit of no defence: If you come to this, mark what will follow: Even that millions are in the Church that are no Subjects of the Pope, but do reject him. If there were two real Popes, there were two real Churches, and therefore neither of them was Universal; and consequently neither of the two were Popes, because not Universal Bishops, so ill do such Forgeries cohere: But if only one of them was a true Pope, then all that followed the other, rejected the Pope. Either these were saved or damned. If saved, then men that reject the Pope may be saved: And then why ask you us where was a Church that rejected the Pope before Luther? when you tell us where, at home. If damned, what a happiness befell one Kingdom, and what a misery the other, by the Title or No-Title of the Popes? Was it all France and that Party, or Germany and that Party that were damned all those times? Hell had a great Harvest by it, which soever it was: and it's pity that one Man should be able to damn so many Nations by pretending that he was the true Pope: And methinks such a division as this should be called a proper Schism; unless he will be so jocular as to say, that it was a proper division and rent, but no proper Schism.
I add this note, Reader; if there be any Sect in the world that are true Schismaticks according Sect. 12.to W. I.'s own definition, judge whether it be not the Papal Sect? For it is they that condemn all the World, save themselves, and say that none else are Churches of Christ, and consequently separate from the whole Church of Christ, except themselves (who are but a third or fourth part of the whole:) I never knew any of all our Sectaries do so; no not the Quakers themselves who come nearest it, (unless perhaps the Seekers, that say the Church is lost) but the Papists do so: Indeed they separate not always from themselves, though they do from all others; no more do any other Sect.
R. B. Though I am sure St. Paul calls it Schism when men make divisions in the Church, though not from it, not making two Churches, but dislocating some Members, and abating Charity, and causing Contentions where there should be Peace; yet I accept your continued justification of us, who, if we should be tempted to be dividers in the Church, should yet hate to be dividers from it; as believing that he that is separated from the whole Body is also separate from the Head.
W. J. I am glad you accept of something at the last up-shot: If it be for your advantage God give you good on't. I speak not of Schism taken in a large sense, but of that only which is treated by the Fathers, and reckoned up among the most horrid Sins which a Christian can commit, and that separateth from the whole Church▪ See Dr. Ham. of Schism. c. 1. 2, 3.
R. B. This is already answered. I again intreat you then to consider what a horrid sin it is in the Papal Sect to separate from all the Churches in the World, and then to divert their Consciences by crying out of Schism against all that will not joyn with them in so dangerous a Schism.
2. And I humbly admonish those Protestants that cry out Schism, Schism, against all that will not do as they do, even in a thing which they call indifferent, and others account a heynous Sect. 13.sin, to remember, that even these Papists are so moderate, as not to condemn other men as Schismaticks, unless they separate from the whole Church of Christ. And I hope to refuse the Tridentiu… Symbolical Oath, or any other false or sinful Covenant or Profession, is not to separate from the whole Church of Christ; for false Oaths, Covenants, or other Sins, are not essential to Christ's Church.
R. B. Sir, urgent and unavoidable business constrained me to delay my return to your solutions Sect. 14.or Explications of your definitions till this June 29. 1660. When you desire me to answer any such questions, or explain any doubtful passages of mine, I shall willingly do it: In the mean time you may see while your Terms are unexplained; and your explications or definitions so insignificant, how fit we are to proceed any further, till we better understand each other as to our Terms and Subject; which when you have done your part to, I shall gladly, if God enable me, go on with you till we come (if it may be) to our desired issue: But still crave the performance of the double task you are engaged in. Richard Baxter.
W. I. Sir, I have thus far endeavoured to satisfie your Expectation; and to acquit my self of all obligations: wherein I have sought, as I strongly hope, first Gods eternal Glory, and in the next place, your Eternal good, with his for whom I under take this labour, and of all these who attentively and impartially peruse this Treatise. William Johnson.
R. B. Your intentions I leave to your self; of your performance and my answer I desire such judges as you describe, even attentive and impartial re…ders: But O how rare is impartiality, even in them that think they ha… it.
In the end I added an Appendix in answer to this objection of theirs, that [We can have no true Chūrch without Pastors; no Pastors without Ordinations and no Ordination but from the Church of Rome: Therefore when we broke off from the Church of Rome, we interrupted our succession which cannot be repaired but by a return to them.] To this I gave a full answer, of which W. I. taketh no notice.
Lastly, I concluded with an address to himself, in which I gave him the reasons why I published our Writings, and also proved that the Church of Rome hath not successively been the same from the Apostles (much less received no corruptions) which I proved, first, because it hath since received a new essential part, even a pretended Vice-Christ or head of the Universal Church.
2. Because it hath had frequent and long intercisions in that essential head.
3. Because it hath had new essential Articles of Faith and Religion. To all this he giveth no answer.