Bishop Andrewes and Archbishop Laud are the two divines of the seventeenth century generally selected by medievalists of the present day as their patrons and protectors. They justify their own extravagances by claiming the authority of these learned theologians for them. The reason of this, in the case of Bishop Andrewes, probably is that most of his anti-papal polemics were written in Latin, not in the form of treatises, but unsystematically, in reply to Cardinal Bellarmine, and consequently they have not been studied or reproduced with care. They have never been translated into English, and are chiefly known by a few passages which, taken alone, may appear to bear an ambiguous sense. It will be the purpose of this chapter to show, by his own words and teachings, that if the Bishop was profoundly Catholic he was as profoundly Protestant, and that, being a man of the gentlest and most loving and devout spirit (as proved by his Devotions), he, nevertheless, had no sympathy and no tenderness for the mediaeval and modern Roman corruptions which were repudiated at the Reformation. Here and there the Bishops arguments will be abridged, but never in such a way as to make an alteration in his meaning. The only difficulty is to know how to omit or abridge without injury to the cogency of the arguments which in their full form would be too long for reproduction. We will begin by seeing what was Andrewes estimate of the Catholic faith, which was recovered by the Church of England at the Reformation, as opposed to Popery; and for the present we will confine ourselves to extracts from his Responsio ad Bellarminum.
Whether Papists or Protestants are the better Catholics
Right to reject the Catholic faith? The Cardinal would be glad enough to hear us say that; but he will never do so. It may be right, however, to reject the Papal faith. It were a “vile thing” to reject the Catholic faith unless you add the word ” Roman,” and so corrupt the term “Catholic.” The Catholic faith has suffered much injury at your hands in Rome, and has contracted grievous defilements. It is no “vile thing” to reject these in order to cling to the Catholic faith, while repudiating your uncatholic corruptions (Responsio ad Bellarminum, p. 159, Oxford, 1856).
We declare aloud that we are Catholic, but not Roman, the last of which words destroys the meaning of the first. We will never confine words of so wide an import within the narrow limits of one city or one man’s breast. The more that a man refuses to do that, the more Catholic is he. What is sound we retain; what is old we restore; what is new, whether it comes from Rome or Trent, we refuse to acknowledge as Catholic (ibid, p. 163).
There is no part of the Catholic faith that we do not hold; those tenets of yours are patches on the faith, not parts of it (ibid, p. 485).
Prayers in a tongue not understanded of the people, the refusal of the cup to the laity, the celebration of the Eucharist without any communicants, kneeling to images, the right of the Roman Bishop to free subjects from their fidelity and obedience to their sovereign, and so on, were rejected and condemned by the ancient Church, and are rejected and condemned by us. For the first five hundred years there was no Christian Church or man who believed what you now believe in Rome, or acknowledged and accepted what you acknowledge and accept as your chief doctrines; nay, the greatest part of your dogmas were rejected by the Fathers in the very sense that you attach to them; if there are any that they accepted, it was quite in a different sense from yours. There is no important doctrine on which we are not at one with the Fathers and the Fathers with us. Wherever you differ from us, you differ from the Fathers (ibid, p. 69).
We accept without hesitation Vincentius Lerinensis definition: “That which has prevailed always and everywhere and among all, that which has been believed always, everywhere, and by all,” let that be Catholic. That rule of itself is the death of all your opinions which have crept in surreptitiously. Your transubstantiation is not “always,” for it did not exist for twelve centuries. Your primacy is not “everywhere,” for it is not throughout the East. But, says the Cardinal, the very name of Protestant was not heard for 1500 years. Well, the name of Jesuit is still more modern. Circumstances gave us the name of Protestants. For we protested that we would not any longer endure errors and abuses, but would remove them. If you would allow those things to be reformed in your Churches in which you differ from us (and there are very many in which we agree) peace would return to the world. We retort the argument: How can transubstantiation be Catholic that is, always believed? and Concomitance? and One kind? I refrain with difficulty from asking this “how” regarding a number more of your novelties (ibid, p. 25).
“The Roman Church,” says the Cardinal, “has got the name of Catholic. “What! a part got the name of the whole an individual got the name of the species? Let him tell that to his own idiotae! For anyone who has the least smattering of learning recognises the claim at once as having a sound of Donatus, who said that Christ had deserted the rest of the world, and was not to be found anywhere except in Donatus party. Donatus assertion, however, is the least objectionable of the two, for he did leave a whole quarter of the globe to Christ, and did not thrust Him into one ruined city. The Cardinal is the worst, in so far as Rome is smaller than Africa (ibid, p. 163).
It is contrary to the faith to make “Roman” equal to “Catholic,” and contrary to reason not to acknowledge that the whole is greater than its part (ibid, p. 218).
Holy Scripture
Our savour is of the Scriptures alone, but everything with you is full of the fabricated opinions of men, out of which your faith is formed; so that what you cry up as a Rock is nothing but a heap of sand; they are only human opinions that you cling to as your Rock (ibid, p. 452).
You never dreamed of translating the Holy Bible till we undertook the task. You resisted long; you fought with fire. Wherever you can and dare, you keep back the people from the sacred books. But why, when Moses, Paul, the Fathers, and especially Chrysostom, so earnestly and frequently urged their diligent reading, not only in church, but at home? Ay, let them read, let them understand as much as God enables them to comprehend, and if they are in difficulty let them have recourse to theologians! (ibid, p. 369).
Don’t accuse us for rejecting the Apocrypha from the canon of Scripture! We have received our canon from the Fathers of the Council of Laodicea. It is the same as that of Melito, Origen, Athanasius, Hilary, Nazianzen, Amphidochius, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Ruffinus, Damascene (ibid, p. 356).
The Sacraments
For more than a thousand years the number of Seven Sacraments was never heard of. How, then, can the belief in Seven Sacraments be Catholic, which means, always believed? (ibid, p. 72).
The Eucharist
We are willing enough to grant that there is a Memory of the Sacrifice in it ; but we will never grant that your Christ, made of bread, is sacrificed in it. The King knows that the Fathers used the word “sacrifice,” and doesn’t count that a novelty, but he ventures so to regard, and does so regard, your “Sacrifice of the Mass.” Private masses he asserts to have been unknown to the Fathers say, and masses not private, in which you worship transubstantiated bread (ibid, p. 250).
It would have been better for you, as many think, if you held the same faith that we hold regarding the Sacrament, and had not touched the giddy opinion of transubstantiation. For ever since you introduced it into Christianity so many thorny and knotty questions have been every day occupying you and your schools, and their treatment has met with such ill-success, that it would have been very well for Christendom if, as the Fathers (by the acknowledgment of our English Jesuits) knew nothing of it, so their successors had never heard its name. Such are questions about the quantity of Christ when in the bread: “Whether Christ is there in His own quantity or in the quantity of the bread” (Thomas Aquinas); “Supposing He is there in His own quantity, whether it be in a manner that is not quantitative” (ibid.); “Whether Christ s substance be there in the accidents without inherence” (ibid.), which is contrary to logic; “Whether the word frangitur (is broken) is to be regarded as not in the passive voice, because Christ’s body cannot be broken” (ibid.), which is contrary to grammar; “Whether mice can live upon accidents” (ibid.); and “whether worms can be generated from accidents” (ibid.), which is contrary to physics,” Whether Christ is at the same moment resting still in the pyx in one place and is moving on elevation in another place,” and “whether at the same moment He goes up when elevated by one priest and comes down when another lowers Him” (ibid.) and I don’t know how many more questions. We may say about the whole matter: God made His Sacrament simple, “but they have sought out many inventions ” (Eccles. vii.29). All this is, in fact the Tridentine, not the Christian, faith; Christianity existed long before it was preached or believed (ibid, p. 14).
One Kind
On this point error begets error on error. Christ, says the Cardinal, instituted the Eucharist in so far as it is a sacrifice in both elements in so far as it is a Sacrament in either of the two. For the essence of a sacrifice, he says, both are required, neither can be absent; if one be absent, the sacrifice is mutilated. For the essence of a Sacrament either of them is enough; which you please of the two is sufficient; either one or the other may be away, and yet the Sacrament is not mutilated. This is magisterial enough, but it is the arbitrary dictum of the Cardinal. What Father says so? Where is the appeal to the first five hundred years?
Under the species of bread, says the Cardinal, the Sacrament is entire; under the species of wine the Sacrament is also entire; and yet these two entire Sacraments are not two entire Sacraments, but only one entire Sacrament! Nay, more surprising still, under the species of bread there is the Sacrament, and under the species of wine there is the Sacrament, and yet they are not two Sacraments, and nevertheless, they are two Sacraments!
They are not two, but one, if haste is used if a man takes them together at one time; they are not one, but two, if there is delay if a man takes them at two separate times, or if two people take them at one time! When they are taken together, they are two parts of a whole; neither of them is itself a whole. When they are taken separately, they are two wholes, neither of them is a part and so a part is equal to the whole! He receives as much who takes either element by itself as he who takes both at the same time! Who can understand this? “One not one,” “two not two,” “two wholes taken together are not two,” “two are one if taken together,” “two are not two unless taken separately.” Why should the Sacrament be affected so much by time, when it is not affected by place?
Then I have this inquiry to make: Why, on the theory that the blood is always with the body and the body with the blood, should the sacrifice be regarded as mutilated unless both kinds are present, and the Sacrament not? What becomes of the Cardinal’s doctrine of concomitance? In the sacrifice he rejects it; let him reject it, therefore, in the Sacrament! But he will not do so in the Sacrament. “There” he says, “either one of the two is sufficient”; just as if concomitance were kept at the door while the Cardinal was offering the sacrifice, and called in as soon as it had been finished. How can these things hold together?
The Apostle finds the symbol of the body in “the bread which we break”; of the blood in “the cup which we bless.” Reception of the bread is partaking of the body; the cup is the communication of the blood. A little below he says, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils,” regarding the drinking of the cup with as great solicitude as the eating of the bread.
But if the Sacrament is perfect, as you say, under the species of bread, why is the priest, when he comes to taking the Sacrament, not contented with that which is perfect? Why should he take more than that which is already perfect? Why should that not be perfect for him which is perfect for the people? Or, why should he not be contented himself with what he desires them to be contented with?
There is no analogy between this case and single or trine immersion. There is but one act of immersion in Baptism, but there are two acts in the Eucharist of eating and drinking; and there are two subjects bread and wine. Besides, here there is a positive command; there there is none. Christ gave no command about the number of immersions in baptism whether it should be one or three; but He did give a command about both kinds in the Eucharist. He gave an express command a command expressly obligatory on all. He said “Drink,” as well as “Eat”; and when He said ” Drink ” He added ” all of you.” If the Saviour had used that word “all” after “eat,” it would have been a great help to the Cardinal’s argument. But when Christ gives a command and uses the words of injunction, there is no room for the Church’s legislation, but only in cases where, as in immersion, He leaves it undecided. For if He had said “Dip once only,” or if He had said, “Dip three times,” I suppose the Church could not have changed the rule, nor would the Cardinal maintain that it would have a right to change it. But He did say, “Eat,” and He said also “Drink,” and “in like manner”; and He said, “Do this” in regard both to one act and the other. By saying that, Christ closed the question; nor has the Church the right of leaving open that which Christ has closed; nor of ordering that one kind only be received when Christ twice ordered both kinds; nor when Christ enjoined, “Do this,” in respect of both, expunging His Words in respect to one, and forbidding men to ” do it.” We may act as we please where no command has been given ; but when He gives the command, “Drink,” ” Drink ye all,” “Do this,” it is no longer permissible or justifiable to disobey (ibid, p. 251).
Reservation
That carrying about of yours is against Christ’s command, and Scripture nowhere favours it. It is contrary to the purpose of the institution. A sacrifice has to be consumed; a Sacrament to be taken and eaten, not laid up and carried about. Let that be done which Christ desired when He said ” Do this,” and there will be nothing left for the priest to expose, or the people to worship, in the pyx (ibid. p. 267).
Purgatory
Let those who believe in purgatory take very good heed that they do not miss their road and find themselves in hell instead of purgatory. “For they are places near one another,” if we are to believe the Cardinal. The Pope, with his indulgences, has landed many of you in hell, while duping you with the hope of only getting to purgatory; perhaps if they had had only the fear of hell (and they would have had if they had not been deluded by that hope) they might have escaped hell (ibid, p. 222).
Supererogation
Unless a man has done all that God commands him and has paid the whole debt (and who has ever done that or can do, when the Apostles themselves pray daily that their trespasses may be forgiven?) he is super-arrogant when he dreams of supererogation (ibid, p. 268).
Saint-worship
“Come to Me,” says the Saviour that is, according to Cardinal Bellarmine: ” Stay where you are, and send some go-between to Me; that is all that is wanted, though you don’t come yourselves.” So “Come” means: “Don’t come, let others come.” You make approach to the saints when you pray to them, the saints make approach to Christ, and Christ to God. This would be quite right if Christ had said: “Go to the saints; let them come in your place; don’t yourselves come to Me; it is just as good whether you come yourselves or the saints come for you.” But now, as He has said: “Come to Me; come all of you, and I will refresh you” (by Myself surely, not by My ministers), why do we not go straight to Him, without a go-between, and ask of Him, but turn off to them and ask of them that they would be good enough to ask? Are there any of the saintly spirits with whom we can converse with greater safety and joy than with our Jesus? Is access to them easier? Have they more indulgent moments for speaking? Do the saints know more of our needs? Are their bowels of mercy more enlarged than Christ’s? Is their goodwill towards us greater than His, so that our confidence should be greater when we are with them? Should any grace of theirs be more precious to us than Christ’s promise, “I will refresh you”? Should any nearness to them be dearer to us than Christ’s instruction, “Come to Me”? When you thus invoke the saints, you give them Christ’s place; if you go to them, you put them in the place of Christ, for them to refresh you instead of Him. You take them as mediators with God, to obtain His pardon for you by their prayers. Paul and John never made themselves that, and had they done so, faithful Christians would not have endured it, as St. Augustine (Contra Parmen., ii. 8, 1 5) teaches (ibid, p. 242).
Angel-worship
Chrysostom points out that there were some who, from a spurious humility, said that we ought not to draw nigh to God by Christ but by angels, for it was too great a thing for us to go straight to Christ without the intervention of the angels; it was too much beneath the majesty of Christ that we should be brought nigh by Himself, and more suitable to our littleness that angels should perform that task for us. It was for this reason, says Chrysostom, that the Apostle occupied himself from beginning to end in the Epistle to the Colossians with Christ, dwelling upon the blood of His Cross, His passion, His love, in order to drive out that vicious humility and show that we might have access to Christ immediately and without angelic intervention (ibid, p. 245).
Image-worship
Both are wrong to worship the creature either for or with the Creator. We say plainly that images are not to be worshipped, whether of false gods or of holy men. Why, holy men themselves are not to be worshipped, much less their images! The word “worship” is taken from the second commandment, and Christ Himself has taught us that God alone may be worshipped. Let the Cardinal explain to us how it is that he gives to his images what the Law confines to God alone. Images become idols if they are worshipped, and the worship of idols is idolatry. The Law says nothing about an “idol,” but forbids any “likeness,” which covers both images and idols. Religious worship is due to God only. The Cardinal says that the worshipper does not worship the image, but kneels before the image and worships the saint whose image it is. The Cardinal, being learned in metaphysics, may do so, but what of the people? And, after all, what is this but the excuse of the heathen man in Augustine (in Psa. cxiii.) who said that he did not worship the image, but looked at the sign of that which he had to worship? Which of the ancient Christians ever practised image-worship? Which of them has allowed that it ought to be practised? Which of them has said that an image is not a “likeness”? But God’s Law prohibits “every likeness”; be it an idol, be it an image, if it is a “likeness” it is forbidden. “Thou shalt not worship them” is prohibition, and there is no restriction nor distinction about this or that manner. Worship is declared proper to God alone. “Thou shalt not worship any likeness.” Oh yes, “thou shalt worship some likeness,” provided that thou dost not worship it “as God,” or that thou worshippest it “as a likeness, not as an idol” are not these precepts absolutely contrary the one to the other? Gregory I. says, “Thou shalt not worship,” but what his piety forbade won its way by the devil’s deceit, and prevailed two hundred years afterwards (ibid, p. 274).
Certainly, the images of the saints are not idols, but you make them idols by worshipping them and offering incense to them, as was done of old to the brazen serpent and is being done by you every day (ibid, p. 392).
Relics
The saints themselves are not to be worshipped, much less their relics. Not the saints “God alone is to be worshipped” ; so says Origen in so many words (“Contra Cels.” viii. 26). ” We have learnt to worship God alone,” says Eusebius (“Praep. Evan.” iv. 5). “The nature of the Godhead is singular, and that alone may be worshipped,” says Cyril Alex. (” Thesaur.” ii. 1). “None, we read, may be worshipped except God,” says Ambrose (“De Spin,” iii.12). “If it is an object of worship, how is it not God?” says Nazianzen (Orat. XXXVII.). Hardly would these Fathers worship the saints, with the Cardinal; still more hardly would they have worshipped their relics. Jerome says: “We don’t worship or adore, I will not say the relics of saints, but not even the sun or the moon, nor angels nor archangels, nor cherubim nor seraphim ” (Ep. cix.). What can the Cardinal say when the old Fathers of the Church cry out, “We don’t worship the relics of the martyrs”? He is caught and held fast so that he cannot escape. Angels and saints stand on the same footing, and relics cannot be in better case than those whose relics they are (ibid, p. 61).
The Cardinal will not allow the relics to remain quietly in their coffin; he disturbs them, brings them out, exhibits them, carries them about, pulls them asunder for the profit of the priest and for the cajoling of the people. What Fathers did that for five hundred years? (ibid, p. 274).
Worship of the Cross
Worship of the Cross is a Pagan, not a Christian practice, as stated in Minutius Felix’s “Octavius,” c. xxix. (ibid., p. 270).
Vicar of Christ
Our desire is that the Holy Spirit should occupy the post that belongs to Him, and the Pontiffs come down from it and give up their lying title, which fourteen hundred years ago Tertullian ascribed to the Holy Ghost (” De Praescript,” xxviii.), and the Pontiff, with a few others, ascribes to himself. Perhaps he won t quarrel with Tertullian if he is granted the title of Vicar of God (which he has long been aiming at) instead of Vicar of Christ, so as to be able to dominate not only Churches, but empires (ibid, p. 292).
Papal Supremacy
The Fathers understand by “Feed My sheep” “Receive again from My hands the office of feeding: be one of the shepherds, though you have not deserved to be, after denying Me so often. But your interpretation is a dream of your own, your gloss, not theirs. You say “Feed” that is, “Be Supreme Pontiff and Ordinary Ruler” “My sheep “that is, ” over Apostles.” Or, “Feed” that is, “Be the visible Head in My place” “My sheep” that is, “Over the visible body of the Church.” Christ did not say that to Peter ; much less to Linus, or Cletus, or Clement did He say: “Feed My sheep” that is, “Let John, My beloved Apostle and Evangelist, be subject to you, Linus, or Cletus, or Clement ; you are to be his visible head ; he is to recognise you as his superior and pay you reverence ; he must yield himself to you to feed him” (ibid., p. 295).
Any primacy that Rome has came from the Fathers, not from Christ; and because Rome was the seat of the Emperor, not of Peter (ibid., p. 231).
Gregory I. said: “I confidently declare that whosoever calls himself Universal Bishop is worse (praecurrit) in his pride than Antichrist.” Now the name of Universal Bishop belongs to the Pontiff, and that by the gift of Phocas (ibid, p. 386).
And who is more covetous and thirsty for gold than your Pontiff, by his indulgences, his jubilees, his tax-book of the apostolic chancery? Who is more elated at being carried, not on the back of an animal, but on the shoulders of men? Who prouder, trampling on emperors and telling them to lick the dust from his feet? Who equals him in pride, allowing himself to be written down, “Lord God” (“Extrav. Joan,” xxii. 14), and not having the words deleted ; admitting the titles “divine” and “omnipotent” as his own (Marta, “In Bed. Tract, ad Paul. V.”)? (ibid., p. 453).
Peter did not try to deprive Nero of his dominions, for it was difficult for him to believe that “feed” meant “deprive of his dominions.” Nor did his successors deprive of their dominions Domitian, Trajan, Decius, Diocletian. That is Thomas Aquinas’s teaching, and Hildebrand first introduced the practice. Let who will follow Thomas’s teaching and Hildebrand’s practice; we follow the teaching of Paul and the practice of Peter, and with them the teaching and practice of the whole primitive Church (ibid, p. 101).
Regicide
Did not the monk who took off Henry III, King of France, inquire of your theologians, and was not he sent away with the answer that it might rightly be done? Is not he praised for his act in your books and letters? And did not the last most monstrous assassin, the murderer of Henry IV, act purely from conscientious motives, his conscience being informed by your books? Why else were Mariana’s books publicly burnt? Why else did the Sorbonne condemn them for heresy, and the Paris Court for treason? These things teach us not only that such assassinations take place among you, but that they are committed by your counsel and with your approbation (ibid, p. 392).
Old and New Catholics
The Cardinal having expressed a hope that James I. would return to the faith of his ancestor Donald I, the Bishop writes:
It is very well that the Cardinal has named Donald I. For Donald was a Catholic of the old faith, and nothing could be more unlike these new Catholics of yours. Donald never believed that Pope Victor had any supreme right over things temporal; why, he might have heard that Victor was reproved by Irenaeus, not so far from here, in France, for arrogating to himself more than was right, even in things spiritual, by uttering too hasty a sentence against the Orientals. I will venture to say that Donald never worshipped painted or sculptured images of wood or stone. He did not offer his prayers to God in a tongue that he did not understand. He was not robbed of the holy Cup. He would have shuddered at transubstantiation, concomitance, quantitative manner, indulgences, supererogations, as so many spectres. He never heard mention of the fire of Purgatory. He was not fed on accidents. He did not ever see the Sacrament carried about. These things of yours which now make a “Catholic” (themselves uncatholic) he was totally ignorant of. The King sought back to the foot steps of his ancestors, and therefore especially of Donald; he has returned to them, he is earnestly entreating all others to return with him. He has become altogether like what Donald was, and what the kings his predecessors for many ages after Donald were. It is certain that what things the King rejects now were then unknown to them, and that if anyone had so much as named them, they would at once have been amazed at what they heard. The King believes and confesses everything that made them Catholics. For it is quite certain that the Kings of Scotland, and not the Kings of Scotland only, but all the other Christian kings in succession for some centuries, were Catholics by the singular blessing of God without these modern inventions of yours, introduced so long afterwards. At length, indeed, but after an interval of many years, owing to the sin of Christians, those novelties were superinduced by the craft of the Pontiff, and were sown while men slept in evil times, and so men turned aside from the way of their ancestors. Now the King has returned into that way, and is inviting all the rest to return with him. He hopes that they will take care to have that which was from the beginning preached to them; for those things were not so from the beginning which have been corrected by the King and the others. And from the piety and charity of his father and grandfather he has a confident presumption that, if they had seen and known what he now sees and knows, they would agree with him, and be of the same mind, and stand in the same steps. And what he assures himself respecting his ancestors, if they were still alive, he does not refuse to hope will be the case with the monarchs and princes his brothers and cousins now existing ; but he desires and longs and prays God that they may take these things into serious consideration, and bring about on the first opportunity what he trusts they are really in their hearts intending; so that they, too, may go back to the steps of their ancestors, as the King has to his, and standing firmly in them in this life, may come in the future to where they have gone, crowned, together with them, both here and in heaven, and enjoy a blissful reign and everlasting life in heaven in company with those first Christian kings who were truly Catholics (ibid., p. 461).
The extracts already made are all taken from one treatise, and it may perhaps be asked whether that one treatise fully represents the mind of the Bishop. Seeing that it is a professedly polemical treatise, drawn up as an answer to an attack made by Cardinal Bellarmine on King James I, may not the Bishop have expressed himself more vigorously than he would have done if he had been writing uncontroversially? and does not this detract from the apparent strength of his anti-papal convictions? To show that that is not the case, I add extracts from his other works, controversial and non-controversial.
Contrast of England and Rome
Look at our religion in Britain primitive, pure, purified, such as Zion would acknowledge. What! must we take the field to teach that nowhere does there exist a religion more in accord with the true Zion, that is, with the institutions of the Gospel and of the Apostles, than ours? Look at our Confession contained in the XXXIX. Articles; look at our Catechism : it is short, but in spite of its shortness there is nothing wanting in it. Look at the Apology of our Church truly a Jewel. Whoso will, may find our doctrines there; it would be too long for me to go through them all here.
Walk about Zion and go round about her. We have for our rule of religion one Canon given us by God in writing, the two Testaments, the three Creeds, the first four Councils, five Centuries, three before and two after Constantine, and the Fathers who lived in them. For those who are not satisfied with the old Catholic Faith without the new patches of Rome, those who are not contented unless by draining to the dregs they reach the abuses and errors, not to say fables and figments, which afterwards filled the Church, we leave them to the enjoyment of their choice. Let them betroth themselves to God with a faith that is not written. Zion, certainly, was not so betrothed (Hos. 2. 20). Let them worship they know not what in their relics and in their Host. That comes from the mountain of Samaria, not from Zion. Let them pray in a tongue that they do not understand, and celebrate their rites without understanding, and therefore without fruit, if the Apostle knows anything of the matter (1 Cor. 14. 15). These were not the prayers or songs of Zion. Let them call on those whom they have not been taught to believe in (Rom. 10. 14), and go to the Saints with greater diligence and frequency than to Christ. That was not done in Zion. Let them prostrate themselves and bow before a painted or carved likeness. Zion would rend her garments at such an act. Let them mutilate the Eucharist by one-half; in the upper chamber of Zion it was taken, not in that way, but in its integrity. Let them “worship the Deity, hiding there under the species” made from the flour-mill. Zion would shudder at this and utterly repudiate it. What! when they adore their Pope placed and sitting upon the altar; when they make a man, to say the very least, encompassed with infirmities, often illiterate, often of bad life, very often a mere canonist, to be the pillar of their faith and religion, unable, forsooth, to err! Would Zion bear that? There is nothing here which has a savour of Zion nothing at all, or of that primitive and true faith which was once delivered to the saints. These are not the betrothals of a chaste faith. There is too much meretricious colouring. God would not “rejoice over” these things (Isa. 62. 5).
Look, too, at our ecclesiastical Order, which even an Apostle might gladly see, and which I dare to call plainly Apostolic. We have not lay Presbyters and Deacons, nor is our ecclesiastical order without Bishops, whom “the Holy Ghost has placed to rule the Church of God.” But we have Deacons and Presbyters of the clergy, and above them Bishops, such as all antiquity has recognised and respected (Sermon on Frederick the Count Palatine’s leaving England in 1613).
You charge us with new opinions? Nay, I tell you, if they are new, they are not ours. We appeal to the ancients, to the furthest antiquity; the newer a thing is, the less we like it; the less new that it is, the more we are pleased with it. Nor is any saying more agreeable to our ears than that of our Saviour: “From the beginning it was so.” We have no better definition of heresy than that which is contrary to the three old Creeds or any of the four old General Councils. Is not that to hate new opinions? We innovate in nothing. We restore perhaps what those of ancient time held, which you have innovated upon. Who can bear to hear you complaining of novelty, when you are every day turning out from your workshop new sects, new glosses, new opinions, which you have fabricated? If you retain anything that is old, you have so interpolated it that not one of the ancients would recognise it if he came to life again. Anyone who should look for the old Roman Church in your modern Roman Church would lose his labour. To be subject to Rome and to depend upon her is the sum of your religion (Tortura Torti, p. 96).
Wherever we have changed anything it has been done because in your ritual you had gone away from the pure and perfect worship of God, and because it “was not so from the beginning”; for example, in the worship of likenesses contrary to the Second Commandment, of which you were so conscious that you used to expunge the Second Commandment from your, books ; and in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which you have halved, contrary to the expressed desire of Christ; and in the Liturgy not understanded of the people, contrary to the mind of the Apostle. And then we have changed for the better and reformed, whatever faults crept into the Mass itself through evil times, or through the carelessness or wrongfulness of men. When our predecessors belonged to your communion, they protested against these things, and acting on that protestation, they separated from you until those things were changed for the better.
Whatever you have of the primitive faith and religion remains untouched with us. The charge of our being Calvinists is now given up. No one here is bound to swear obedience to Calvin. We rate him according to the value of his reasoning and no more. If you were not more bound to the Pope, you would not be what you are and what you are rightly named Papists (ibid, p. 375).
You inquire about our King, and I about the Pope. Which is the truer Catholic? Which of the two regards the Church as spread throughout the world, for that is the meaning of the word “Catholic”? Which of them counts it as not tied down to any spot? The King recognises it as Catholic because it is everywhere disseminated, not tied to any place, nor in any way circumscribed; but your Pope does not dare to use the name “Catholic” without the addition of “Roman.” But by adding “Roman” he overthrows “Catholic,” as if he should profess his belief in it as confined to no place, and yet confined to one special place. “Roman Catholic” is just as if he said “particular universal,” or “part whole,” or as if he shut up the whole world in one city. A man who thus believes is not a Catholic: he is a Donatist; for in like manner they used to believe in an African Catholic Church. You are just like them in believing in a Roman Catholic Church; and as their Church was not Catholic, but the Donatist sect, because it was African, so yours is not Catholic, but the Roman Pope’s sect, because it is Roman. Besides, why have you such a bad conscience that you don’t dare to use the word “Catholic” by itself? Why do you add Roman? What is the use of it if there is no Catholic except what is Roman? The only use of the word is to distinguish yours from some other Catholic, which is not Roman. That which is nothing but Catholic is really Catholic, but yours is not, because of that addition; you take away the value of the first word “Catholic” by the second Roman (ibid., p. 368).
The meaning of the word “Catholic” may be gathered from the Creed, where it is introduced to distinguish the Church after Christ from that before Him, the Christian from the Jewish Church. The Jewish Church was confined to one nation, the Christian Church is spread as far as the world extends. There is no proper opposition between Catholic and any heresy, except that of the Donatists of old, who confined the Church to their one African Church, and that of the Papists at present, who shut it up in their single Roman Church, and so from Catholic make it uncatholic Papists, I say, and any others who confine the universality of the Church to one spot. “Universal” and “a part of Africa” “universal” and “what is dependent on Rome,” are properly contrasted with one another. For both these expressions refer to place, in one case every place, and in the other only some place (ibid, p. 372).
Well, then, belong you to your Roman Catholic Church, which is not found in the Creed. We will belong to that in which we express belief in the Creed; that which is simply Catholic and not restricted to Rome, and is likewise orthodox; which does not worship any likeness, nor adore it knows not what; which bids all drink from Christ’s Cup ; which prays with the spirit, and no less with the understanding; which does not call upon those whom it has not been taught to believe in (Rom. 10. 14); where Christ is the Head of the Faith, and the Holy Ghost his Vicar. This is the Church to which we belong, and which we profess to be members of; but as you have still among you many remains of the doctrines of the Catholic Faith, although somewhat corrupted, we can call you members of the Catholic Church, though not sound members (ibid, pp. 4, 9, 6).
Let us pray God for the Catholic Church, that it may be established and increase; for the Eastern Church, that it may be delivered and made one; for the Western Church, that it may be restored to its primitive estate and cease to be aggressive (pacifice agat); for the British Church, that all things lacking may be supplied and all else strengthened (Devotions, Second Day).
Interpretation of Scripture
The Papists means are these: Beside prayer, wherein they agree with us, they set down these means also The Fathers, the Councils, the Pope and the Church. They say all these are true means of interpretation. We say, No. … The means for interpretation, as we allege them, are six: 1. The first, wherein they and we agree, is prayer. 2. Conference of places (comparison of texts); the less plain must be referred to the more plain. 3. Inspectio fontium, to look to the original, the Greek text or Hebrew. 4. Acquaintance with the dialect. 5. Oculus ad scopum, to mark the end (purpose) of the writer. 6. Look to antecedentia and consequentia, i.e., every circumstance. Both jointly and severally their grounds are false, and ours are the only true means of interpretation. … As to the Pope Damasus, a Pope, as Hierome saith, subscribed to heresy; Liberius, an enemy to Arians, subscribed after to that heresy; Honorius was condemned in the sixth General Council in seven canons and seven actions for subverting the faith (Catechistical Doctrine, Part I).
Universal Bishop
Baronius reports Phocas decree as follows: “That the Roman Pontiff alone is to be called Ecumenical or Universal, and the Bishop of Constantinople not.” John and Cyriacus did no more than use the name which, by Phocas decree, the Roman Bishop has from that time claimed to himself. Yet in a very short time a great change was made in the character of the title. In the Bishop of Constantinople it was “foolish,” “proud,” “wicked,” “perverse,” “profane,” “blasphemous”; but within the space of two years in the Bishop of Rome it was none of these. Strange that Phocas should decree that a title which Gregory declared wicked and blasphemous must not be allowed to the Bishop of Constantinople, because it was proper to the Bishop of Rome; and strange that Boniface should have accepted it! (Tortura Torti, p. 405).
Idolatry
It is easy to see on which side idolatry is, and it is not ours. This is one article among many on account of which Papists are accounted by us, who are true Catholics, to be (on this point) heretics. We do not call the images of Christ or of the saints idols. They are not so on their own part, but we say they may become so on yours, just as much as the brazen serpent was on the part of the Jews, namely, if they are worshipped ; for they are likenesses of things that are in heaven, before which you “bow down to them and worship them,” which in so many words is forbidden by the Divine Law. What are in themselves only images become idols to the Cardinal as soon as he begins to worship them. By doing which he and all who do the like are idolaters (ibid, P. 378).
To take away all images God made sure work by forbidding all manner of likeness in heaven, earth, waters.
The Bishop then proceeds to refute the Papists arguments on the other side: (1) From Fathers and Councils; (2) from the distinction of προσχυνείν and λατζεύειν; (3) from the allegation that worship is given to the object signified, not to the image; (4) from the needs of the ignorant and illiterate (Catechistical Doctrine, Part III.).
Their worshipping the relics of their saints and martyrs is mere gentilism, the ancient bait of Satan ( Discourse of Ceremonies, Part III.).
Purgatory
The popish Purgatory in scope and being agreeth with the heathen purgatory mentioned in Plato and Virgil (ibid.).
The School-doctrine of Man’s Merits
Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord. And why? For no flesh is righteous
in Thy sight no flesh, no man, righteous or justified; then surely no true merit. We deserve nothing, but are unprofitable servants, and our best works are imperfect, and fall short of that perfection that law and justice do require. So then, sacrifices of goodness and alms or distribution there must be; they are necessary to salvation in them that have time and opportunity and means. But there can be no trust or confidence placed in them, for they are imperfect and defective, and therefore merit nothing at God’s hands out of justice, but only are accepted out of God’s mercy and the infinite merits of Christ; and therefore the greatest part of the dignity (worth) of the best works of the best men is to renounce all trust and confidence in ourselves and our best works, and to repose all our hopes in the mercy and merits of Christ (Bishop Buckeridge’s Funeral Sermon on Bishop Andrewes ).
Oaths
The Cardinal proclaims aloud that the Pope may do away with every obligation of laws and oaths, so that no one would be more secure with a man that had taken an oath than with one who had not. In this matter of binding and releasing the Popes act like conjurers. They allow their Bulls to bind at one time and not at another. Gregory XIII. played in this way a little while ago about the Bull of Pius V. It bound the Queen and her heretical subjects, but was not binding on her Catholic subjects. It did not bind the Catholics under present circumstances, but it would bind them when the Bull could be openly executed. A wonderful contriver! By one and the same Bull he binds and he does not bind. He binds heretics, he does not bind Catholics, and though he does not bind Catholics, yet he does bind them! If the Pope has this power of releasing from oaths, it is just the same thing whether Catholics swear or do not swear; the Pope will take care, though they may have taken an oath, that they shall not be guilty of perjury; and such is his power that he will first release them and then hedge them in with his plenary indulgences, so thick and so close one upon another, that perdition itself will not be able to make them perish (Tortura Torti, p. 72).
One Kind
I see that we have an acknowledgment of the mutilation of the Eucharist. For the Council of Trent itself says that “Although Christ our Lord at the Last Supper instituted this venerable Sacrament in both kinds and delivered it to the Apostles; although the use of both kinds was not uncommon from the beginning of the Christian religion, nevertheless … it approves of the practice under one kind, which was introduced for grave and just reasons, and decrees that it is to be held as law” (Sess. xxi. 2).
That is to desert the law of God, which is of Both kinds, and to introduce into its place another law, which is of One kind (ibid, p.434).
Attendance without Communicating
It is an Eucharistic sacrifice (peace offering), and the law of that kind of sacrifice is this that the offerer must partake of it, and he must partake of it by taking and eating, as the Saviour enjoined; for your “partaking by praying” is modern and new-fangled, newer even than your private Masses (Resp. ad Bell, p. 250).
The law of a peace-offering is: he that offers it must take his part of it, eat of it, or it doth him no good (Sermon IV. Of the Resurrection).
I see not how we can avoid that the flesh of our Peace offering must be eaten in this feast by us, or else we evacuate the offering utterly and lose the fruit of it (Sermon VII. Of the Resurrection).
Incense and Lights
Their priests to have shaven crowns, to be unmarried, to have frankincense offerings, fasts and feasts, to have candles in them, and to carry them up and down, in every respect is heathenish; and Chemnitius in particular proveth this by variety of authors. The placing of lights in churches at some time is not altogether an heathenish ceremony, although it appears by Seneca the Gentiles had it ; but their burning of tapers in their churches at noonday is altogether a pagan custom, as Rhenanus well observes in his comment upon Tertullian ( Discourse of Ceremonies, Part III.).
The Jesuits
I can see the Jesuits (the golden staves and mattocks of the See of Rome, whose name
answereth Heraclitus Greek name of a bow. “Thy name,” said Heraclitus, “βιός (a bow) is life (βιός), but thy work is death,” in office resemble the heathen priests of the Indians, called Brachmans, mentioned by Orosius. He saith: “These heathen clergy-priests also study philosophy and the mathematical arts, insomuch that by their learning and counterfeit holiness they continue all their lifetime the singular contrivers of all fraud and villainy” for my warrant I appeal to the catastrophe of many houses of nobility of this realm acted by the Jesuits (ibid.)
Babylon
John is a true prophet and your Babylon will fall, and it will fall for expunging the confession of Christ, and in its place branding on its forehead a name of manifold blasphemy, and that in large letters, so that he that runs may read it (Tortura Torti, p. 223).
Arrogant Claims of Rome
Tell me this: Are there no Christians groaning under the Turk? Are there no Churches of Christians there? Are there no Christians in Greece, Russia, Armenia, Ethiopia? He wipes them all out And as he has fabricated the Roman Catholic Church, so he now proposes a Roman Christian religion; so that whoever is not a Roman does not belong to the Church, has no religion, is not a Catholic, no, nor a Christian. It is folly for a man to proscribe with one stroke so many kingdoms and nations, all massed together, which do not follow the religion of the Roman Pontiff, and to say that they are Pagans, and to declare that they are not Christians. Then the far greatest part of Europe is in heathendom! But why are they not to be called Christians? What is their so grave sin against the faith or law of Christ that they are to be deprived of this name of Christian? Is it because they would serve God with the understanding no less than with the spirit, and not mutter their holy rites in an unknown tongue? Is it because they all drink of the Cup and do not take only half the Sacrament, or because they do not ” make to themselves any likeness to adore and worship”? Or because they believe in the Holy Catholic Church, according to the old Creed, and not in the Roman Church, according to the new one? Or is it that they attribute too much to Christ, and do not make the suffrages of the saints necessary adjuncts in His office of Intercession, nor human merits in His work of man’s justification, nor Papal Indulgences in His office of satisfying God’s justice? In that case it would seem that they err on the side of excess and are too much Christians (ibid, p. 370).
Is it possible that the man who penned the above extracts (specimens of numberless others), can be justly appealed to as favouring a modern school of medievalists that aims at bringing back tenets and practices which it is plain that he abhorred from his soul? If Bishop Andrewes is a representative of the Caroline divines, is it not plain that a yawning abyss, which nothing can span, lies between them and any school of men that looks back longingly to pre-Reformation doctrines and practices, and secretly or openly prefers them to the Protestantism of the Church of England?
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