The Disarmers Dexterities Examined, Chapter 7 · Section 8
SECT. VIII.
The charge of Pride averted. Confession of fallibility. Questioning the Romish infallibility, our Pride. Disbeliefs caused by pretended pride, make not all Communion unlawfull, much less excusable error without Pride.
TO my second reason, by which I proved the breach to lie on their side, their imposing such conditions on our Communion, that we cannot subscribe without sin against conscience. His answer is, that this is a sinful pride of our understanding to disbelieve all our teachers, and yet to acknowledge our selves but fallible in our contrary belief] By the frame of this obiection compared with the Romanists great principle of infallibility, one would think, that if not the maine, yet some part of this our sinful pride charged on us, consisted in thi…king our selves fallible, or in pretending conscience for the believeing of any thing, whilst we acknowledge our selves fallible; If this were it, then the only way to amend this fault or error, were to assume infallibility, for then 'tis certain, that this could be no ingredient in our charge, either for the constituting, or aggravating our crime, that we acknowledge our selves fallible. But what crime so ever this will be deemed in us, 'twill not be pride certainly, and it must, if it be any thing, be our sinfull humility. But if this be not it (as I cannot indeed suppose, that he that counts infallibility the prerogative, and peculiarity of his own Church, should really think it our fault that we confess our selves fallible) what then is it wherein our sinfull pride consists? It must be sure set down in these words, that we disbelieue all our teachers, and think our selves to understand more of Gods minde than all the world before us.] But then this affirmation wanted some proof, for sure we do not disbelieve all our teachers. The word of God written and unwritten (such as appears to be so) and deposited by the Apostles i… the Church, is certainly our lesson or foreign, and our teachers foreign, are living guides, our Bishops, using the assistance of the Priests, and if the later corrupted Church of Rome were our teacher also (as indeed it assumed that office) before the Reformation, yet sure it was not all our teachers, or all the world before us; The Primitive purest times, from whence we had confestly our Creeds, and all our necessary doctrine, must not (to gratifie S. W.) be quite turned out of the world. So that again our enormous pride is crumbled away into this one atome of questioning the Romish pretensions of infallibility, of comparing and preferring the antient humble before the mode…n assuming Church of Rome, which as S. W. calls pride, so others that are as disinteressed as he, call necessary caution and prudence, and making use of the best means that God hath afforded us, of judging truth by, and a necessary care neither to viol…nce our facul…ies, by forcing them to see, what with the utmost of our intention we cannot dis…ern, nor to charme our consciences, by dissembling and professing the contrary to our present conviction. As for the Church of Rome being our Master and Father and Mother (which is again the postulatum, without which his argument is not able to proceed one step) he knows what is the name of that Elench, it having, next contumelie (to which all other must be content to yield the deference) deserved more of him for the filling up his pages, than all his other materials together.
If it were certainly pride, that produced all our disbeliefs, which brought us under the Romane Censures, I should not doubt to yield to him that we are to blame our selves, so farr as to the occasion of our disunion. But when the matter in hand is but their surmise of our pride, and when the question is of the lawfulness of their retaining with us external Communion fraternal (for that is the only thing that in this latter part of the treatise I undertook to consider) I see no convincing reason why a Romanist which may possibly be as proud as I, or however, not free from all other filthiness of the flesh or spirit, and knows more of it by himself than by me, may not lawfully hold external Communion with me, and those others, who may possibly be (though without revelation he cannot be sure they are) guilty of pride? Suppose a Romanist should be drunk, yea and vent some heretical pravity in this distemper, were it unlawful for another Romanist of the same particular Diocess with him, before, or without his immediate superiors Excommunicating him, to preserve Christian society, or were it necessary to renounce all external Communion with him? If it shall be said, it were, instead of exacting the reason of the affirmation, I shall again ask, but what if he only surmised the other to be drunke, and the doctrine he vented to be heretical, and this upon no other proof of the truth of his surmise, but only because he exprest himself to think somewhat, which was contrary to the Romanists sense in religion, which of what moment soever it were, it were yet confest, that if he did believe it without any fault of his own (if it were not caused in him by drink or such other distemper) twere but a blameless, at least excusable mistake in him; would that Romanist think himself in conscience obliged to break Communion with such a man, only by force of the Popes Bull for excommunicating of hereticks? If he would not, I should be glad to be shew'd the disparity betwixt that last case, and the case set down here by S. W. in these words [If it were pride (that [if] not signifying possibly any more, than that he thinks it was pride in us) which made you think otherwise, then it is not innocency in you, or sufficient excuse for your Non-Communion] In the mean, I suppose it is clear from his very affirmation, that 'tis our antecedent pride that makes us schismaticks, and neither our subsequent doctrine nor practice; for schism being the great unexcusable sin now objected against us, that which makes us unexcusable, must be it that makes us schismaticks. And then I am sure that being a vice of the minde lies open only to Gods, cannot come under S. W. his cognizance, and that is all that I need reply to that answer.
On occasion of my offering to contest our Negatives by grounds that all good Christians ought to be concluded by, he first asks what these grounds are? Whether any infallible authority? But to that we have oft spoken already. Secondly, whether I think our Saviours command to hear the Church be such a ground? And that question being propounded by the Cath. Gent. is also answered already, Repl. Ch. 9. Sect. 1. and what he hath added to it by way of amplification, hath both in that, and the Reply been distinctly prevented, and so there remains no more of his fourth Sect.