The Disarmers Dexterities Examined, Chapter 7 · Section 7
SECT. VII.
The Romanists excommunicate. The Liturgie their only grievance. Reformation no Schism. Our excommunicating the Romanists, how grounded.
NOw follows his attempt of answers to my sixth particular, which said that the impediments which obstruct external communion are only imputable to them, First because the Pope excommunicated all Catholicks that came to our assemblies.] And his answer is, was it not well done think you?] And that is but the acknowledging all I there affirmed: For if they cast us out from all external fraternal Communion, and justifie their having done it, then 'tis not imputable to us, that we separated from them. What motives they had to do this, belongs only to that other dispute, whether or no we were justly excommunicated by them, and that cannot be debated here, without resuming the consideration of the several Acts of our Reformation, which is again to recite the greatest part of this Book; For sure it must not for ever be supposed without proof, as here he doth, that we maintain heretical doctrines; Or if it must, yet secondly, unless some of our heresies be inserted in our liturgie (which now when he had most provocation to assume, he hath not pretended) 'tis still that Papal Bull that hindred their joyning with us in our Liturgie, and nothing in our Liturgie it self; Thirdly, all that here he pretends for the justice of that Bull, is, that holding us hereticks they could not reasonably let the people goe to be taught false doctrine, to hear the Popes supremacy rail'd at as Antichristian &c.] And that is in effect to excommunicate nothing but our Sermons, for those only have at any time been guilty of what is here objected, and then also I may demand, why the same Bull did not excommunicate Pope Gregories Epistles (or him for his Epistles, as Honorius was after his death condemned for an heretick) which makes it a character of Antichrist for any one to assume to be Universal Bishop? However by this arguing it is supposed, that they might have been permitted to come to our liturgie when there was no Sermon: And yet we know their practice (and that is our best witness of their opinion of the obligation) is quite contrary. They can read our Books, where all that our Sermons can say, may be said, as largely, and as bitterly and they can for curiosity be present at our Sermons too; And in brief 'tis only our liturgie, with which they cannot have any peace, and yet certainly this hath none of the pretended heresie in it.
Next he hath no patience that we should affirm that the Bull in the tenth of Q. Elizabeth was the cause of the separation, when first, saith he, I have laid out knot by knot how the unity of the Church was unloosed in the time of Henry the eighth &c. in casting out the Papal-authority out of this Island] And therefore he will press this over again, and when he hath done so with all his Rhetorick, I may yet satisfie my self with what hath been already answered, that the Pope had never duely any supreme power over this, nor universal over all Nations, and that renouncing an usurper, casting off a barely pretended power, is no rejection of an authority, for by that I must suppose a real, and not an assumed power to be signified.
The same answer is sufficient to the other part of his charge, concerning our forsaking their doctrines and practises; I doubt not but we receded, and that voluntarily from those, which we with the Romanists had formerly been used to; but reforming an error will never be a schism, though S. W. be in never so ill humor about it, we may depart from our own ill habits, and yet not depart from our selves, forsake the riots, wherein we had gone on with our intemperate brethren, and still keep exterernal Communion with them, and never need the recalling of our youthful sins to make our company the better. So that still it remains, that if external Communion with any other fellow Christian may be preserved without acknowledging the Popes Supremacy (and to suppose it may not, is to beg the question of the whole Book) and without continuing of erroneous doctrines and practises (and such we are ready to prove those to be which we have left) we never schismatically departed from their external Communion, untill we were cast out, nor would ever voluntarily have gone from any thing that was Christian in them (such, I presume, is external Communion of Christians) if we had not been violently removed from it.
As for our rejecting Romane Catholicks from our Assemblies, upon their avowed contumacy against the orders of our Church, which he next presseth, that sure is no more, than every national Church is accustomed to do, as long as such discipline is like to prove to edification, else the Censures were useless in the Church. And when he desires to know, why the Church of Rome might not do the like, or why she had not as great authority over those wh… were once hers, as our Church over those who were never ours?] The answer is obvious, because this Nation of ours neither is, nor ever duly was part of the Bp. of Romes Territorie, nor can be pretended to be so, without manifest violation of the Canons of those Councels which the Pope himself hath sworn to preserve; whereas every native by baptism entred into the Church of England, is duely and by force of all antient Canons a member of the Church of England, under this or that Bishop or Metropolitane, and so it is not the same punishable crime, to have cast out an undue usurped forraign power, as to persist in contumacie and separation from an undoubted unquestionable just power of our immediate superiors. And so still this shews on which side the schism truly lies chargeable.