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Princes and magistrates’ putting off themselves all care of the matters of religion, was one of the great causes of the church’s mischief, and of popish and prelatical tyranny. But is this just and fair, Sir, to give out for my opinion that for which you are not able to show the least colour or shadow of consequence from any thing that ever I said?
Hooker hath been of opinion, that the holidays were so advanced above other days, by God’s great and extraordinary works done upon them, that they should have been holier than other days, even albeit the church had not appointed them to be kept holy. Yet Bishop Lindsey would have us believe that they think them holy, only because of the church’s consecration of them to holy political uses.
A heterodoxy, if he mean that ministers are to be sent out without ordination: a contradiction, if he mean that they must be ordained; for then he gives classes a work which is not merely doctrinal. But most strange it is, that he so far departeth from Protestant divines in point of the church’s liberty in choosing ministers.
Councils, although not an essential element in the government of the church, are had recourse to in times of difficulty, in order to settle doctrinal disputes, promote morality and establish or restore discipline. With the exception of the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem, no council was held for the first three hundred years of the church’s existence.
Thus having failed by those rocks of offence, I direct my course straight to the dissecting of the true limits, within which the church’s power of enacting laws about things pertaining to the worship of God is bounded and confined, and which it may not overleap nor transgress. Three conditions I find necessarily requisite in such a thing as the church hath power to prescribe by her laws: 1st.
But once he fell sick, and, asking his magic head, was informed that the church’s name in which he had read Mass the other day was ‘The Holy Cross of Jerusalem.’ The Pope knew at once that he had to die. He gathered all the cardinals around his bed, confessed his crime, and, as a penance, ordered his body to be cut up alive, and the pieces to be thrown out of the church as unclean.
For all this throng of persons had assembled that day with one definite purpose: to see their universal friend and patron, their Saint and their worker of domestic miracles; they had come to pay their homage to a celestial acquaintance, with whom, thanks to the Church’s teaching, they had all been intimate from their cradles.
If they yield us the latter, then it is not the church’s law, but the church’s reasons given for her law, which can warrant the lawfulness of them unto us, which doth elude and elide all that which they allege for the lawfulness of them from the power and authority of the church. And further, if any such reasons be to be given forth for the ceremonies, why are they so long kept up from us?
Is not this to bind the conscience by the church’s bare will and authority, when I must needs constrain the judgment of my conscience to be conformed to the church’s judgment, having no other reason to move me hereunto but the sole will and authority of the church? He saith that we should be directed by the sentence of superiors, and take it as a sufficient ground to our consciences for obeying.
Nay, since the things whereby they offend us are no necessary things, they are greatly to be blamed. That the ceremonies are not necessary in themselves our opposites acknowledge, and that they are not necessary in respect of the church’s determination, I have proved in the first part of my dispute.
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