but that some diversity should grow, while one knew not, nor expected to know what another did." This he saith is "a very admirable device." For answer hereunto we must observe, that the divisions of this part of Christendom are of two sorts: the first is from the faction of the pope; the second, among them that have abandoned the usurped authority of the pope. That the pope and his adherents were the cause of the former of these divisions, and the consequence of it, is affirmed by better men than Master Higgons. "I will not deny," saith Cassander1, a man highly esteemed for piety and learning by the emperors Ferdinand and Maximilian, "that many in the beginning were moved out of a godly affection more sharply to reprehend certain manifest abuses; and that the chief cause of this calamity and distraction, or rent of the Church, is to be attributed to them, who, puffed up with the swelling conceits of their ecclesiastical power, proudly and disdainfully contemned and repelled them that admonished them rightly of things amiss. And therefore I do not think that any firm peace is ever to be hoped for, unless the beginning thereof be from them that gave the cause of this division; that is, unless they that have the government of the Church remit something of that their too great rigour, and, listening to the desires of many godly ones, correct manifest abuses according to the rule of sacred Scripture and the ancient Church, from which they are departed, &c." Touching that," saith Contarenus2, "which the Lutherans say, in the first and last place, of manifold and great abuses brought into the Church of Christ, against which they so exclaim, and concerning which they have made so many complaints to express their grievances, I have nothing to say; but first of all, to pray unto Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and his only-begotten Son, who continually maketh intercession for us, and the Holy Spirit, wherewith we have been anointed to be Christians by the grace of God, and the sacrament of baptism; that he will respect his Church now tottering, and in great danger, and that he will move the hearts of the prelates of the Church, that at last, for a little while putting away this most pernicious self-love, they may 1 In Consult. Art. 7. [p. 933.] 66 2 In Confut. Art. Lutheri. [p. 580. Opp. fol. Par. 1571.] be persuaded to correct things manifestly amiss, and to reform themselves. There needeth no counsel, there needeth no syllogisms, there needeth no alleging of places of scripture, for the quieting of these stirs of the Lutherans; but there is need of good minds, of charity towards God and our neighbour, and of humility, &c." Touching the divisions of them that have abandoned the tyrannical government of the bishop of Rome, and embraced the sincere profession of the heavenly truth, whom this Lucian calleth pretensed gospellers, they are neither such nor so many as our adversaries would make the world believe, as I have shewed at large in the place1 cited by Master Higgons. But be they what they may be, I have truly said that the Romanists are the causes of them, in that their obstinate resistance against all peaceable public proceeding in the work of reformation in a general council, forced men to take another course, and to take this work in hand severally, in the several kingdoms of the world. That there was no hope of reformation by a general council, and that several kingdoms were to take care for the redressing of things amiss within their own compass, I have shewed out of Gerson: his words are these2: "I see that the reformation of the Church will never be brought to pass by a council, without the presidency of a well-affected guide, wise, and constant: let the members therefore provide for themselves through all kingdoms and provinces, when they shall be able, and know how to compass this work." Now that this kind of proceeding3 must needs be accompanied with differences, though not of moment, nor real, yet in show greater than were to be wished, every man, I think, will confess that hath the sense of a man. Against all this Master Higgons hath nothing to say; but, as if he had gone out of his country, and passed the seas of purpose to become a jester amongst our melancholy countrymen that are abroad, to make them merry, maketh a jest of it, as he doth of all other things, and so passeth from it. 1 Third Book of the Church, chap. XLII. [Vol. 1. p. 341.] [FIELD, IV.] 23 (HIGGONS, Appendix, Part H.) But let us give him leave to sport himself a little: we shall have him in earnest by and by. For, in the next part of this chapter, he undertaketh to prove that Gerson (whom I bring in as a worthy guide of God's Church in the time wherein he lived, and one that wished the reformation of things amiss) "utterly detested the reformation that hath been transacted by Luther, Zuinglius, and the rest." But his proofs will be found too weak; for though it were granted that he erred in the matter of transubstantiation, invocation of saints, and some such-like things, yet will it never be proved that he erred heretically, or that he was not willing to yield to the truth in these or any other things wherein he was deceived, when it should be made to appear unto him. Cyprian erred in the matter of rebaptization; Lactantius and sundry other were carried into the error of the Millenaries: many catholics, in Augustine's time, thought that all orthodox and right-believing Christians shall be saved in the end, how wickedly soever they live here: yet were they of one communion with them that thought otherwise. If Master Higgons think that I produce Gerson as a man fully professing in every point of doctrine as we do, he wholly mistaketh me; for I was not so simple either to think so, or to go about to persuade others so; but this is that which I said, and still constantly affirm, that God preserved his true Church in the midst of all the errors and confusions of the papacy; that the errors condemned by us never found general and constant allowance in the days of our fathers; and that there were many who held the foundation, and, according to the light of knowledge which God vouchsafed them, wished the reformation of such things as were amiss, some of them discerning more of the errors and abuses that were then found in the Church, and other fewer; of which number I reckon Gerson to be one of eminent sort and rank. For this worthy divine believed as we do, that all our inherent righteousness is imperfect2; yea, that it is like the polluted rags of a menstruous woman; that it cannot endure the 1 [Pag. 4.] 2 De Consolat. Theolog. Lib. IV. prosa 1. [Tom. 1. col. 169.] trial of God's severe judgment; that we must trust in the only mercy and goodness of God, if we desire to be surely established against all assaults'; that all sins are by nature mortal2; that indulgences reach not to the dead; that they are but remissions of enjoined penance3; that the pope hath no power to dispose of the kingdoms of the world1; that he is like the duke of Venice amongst the great senators of that state, greater than each one, but inferior to the whole company of bishops; that he is subject to error 5; and that in case of error, or other scandalous misdemeanour, he may be judicially deposed; that Christian perfection consisteth neither in poverty nor riches, but in a mind resolved to regard these things no farther than they stand with the love of God, and serve for the advancement of his glory, and the good of men. So that sometimes it is a matter of more perfection to have and possess riches, than to cast them from us; contrary to the false conceit of the Mendicants, who made extreme poverty to be the height of all perfection, and thought that Christ himself did live by begging, which he rejecteth as an absurd error: he teacheth that the precept of Almighty God requireth all the actions of virtue in the best sort they can be performed; and that therefore they do not rightly discern between the matter of precepts and counsels, who imagine that the precept requireth the inferior degrees of virtue, and the counsel the more high and excellent: whereas counsels urge us not to a higher degree of virtue, or moral goodness, but only shew us the means whereby most easily, if all things be answerable in the parties, we may attain to the height of virtue the precept prescribeth; so overthrowing the opinion of works of supererogation: he teacheth that there is no more merit of single life than of marriage, unless the parties living in these different estates otherwise excel one another in the works of virtue; that virginity, in that which it addeth above conjugal chastity, is no virtue, nor higher degree of virtue, 1 Ibid. Lib. I. prosa 3. [col. 138.] 2 Part. 3. Tract. de Vita Spirit. Anim. Lect. 1. [Tom. I. col. 9.] 3 Tract. de Indulgent. [Tom. II. col. 516.] 4 De Potest. Eccles. Consid. 12. [Tom. II. col. 246.] 5 De Auferibilitate Pap. [Consid. 16. Tom. II. col. 219.] 6 De Consil. et Stat. Perfect. [Tom. I. col. 673.] 7 Ibid. but a splendour of virtue only; that the laws of men bind not the conscience1; that they that whip themselves, as some sectaries amongst the papists do, are to be condemned 2; and that the patient enduring of those crosses which God layeth upon us is more acceptable to God than these voluntary chastisements. He condemneth monks intermeddling with secular or ecclesiastical businesses; the superfluous pomp and princely state of cardinals and bishops, making them forget that they are men; that one man holdeth two or three hundred ecclesiastical livings; that the sword of excommunication is so easily drawn out for trifles, and the lords of the clergy use it for the maintenance of their own state: he disliketh the popes appointing of strangers to take cure of souls; the variety of pictures and images in churches, occasioning idolatry in the simple; the number and variety of religious orders; the canonizing of new saints, there being too many canonized already; the apocryphal scriptures, hymns and prayers, in process of time brought into the Church, of purpose or ignorance, to the great hurt of the Christian faith; the diversity of opinions in the Church, as about the conception of the blessed Virgin, and the like; the intolerable superstition in the worshipping of saints; innumerable observations, without all ground of reason; vain credulity, in believing things concerning the saints, reported in the uncertain legends of their lives; superstitious opinions of obtaining pardon and remission of sins, by saying a number of paternosters in such a church, before such an image; the urging of human devices more than the laws of God, and punishing more severely the breach of their own laws than the laws of God; the contempt of the holy scripture, which is sufficient for the government of the Church, and the following of human inventions, which made the state of the Church to be merely brutish; the ambition, pride, and covetousness of popes, subjecting all unto themselves, and suffering no man to say unto them, Why do you so? though they overturn the course of nature; their getting all into their own hands by many crafty and ill means, to the overthrow of that order that should be in the Church; and 1 De Vita Spirit. Anim. Lect. 4. [Tom. III. col. 38.] 2 Part. 1. Tract. Contra Sectam Flagellantium se. [Tom. II. col. 660.] 3 See the places cited in the Third Book Of the Church, chaps. X. XI. [Vol. I. p. 181.] |