Appendix

In which are briefly proposed the motives, or rational inducements, to the Catholic faith, which, according to Dr. Jeremy Taylor, a learned Protestant Prelate (Lib. of Proph: Sect, 20, p. 249, 250), may very easily persuade persons of much reason, and more piety, to retain that which they know to have been the religion of their forefathers, and which have had actual possession and seizure of men's understandings, before the opposite professions had a name, p. 251.

1st. I consider, says he, p. 429, that those doctrines that have had long continuance and possession in the church, cannot easily be supposed in the present professors to be a design, since they have received them from so many ages. — Long prescription is a prejudice oftentimes so insupportable that it cannot with many arguments be retrenched, as relying upon these grounds, that truth is more ancient than falsehood; that God would not for so many ages forsake his church, and leave her in an error; that whatsoever is

04 An Appendix.

New is not only suspicious but false: which are suppositions pious and plausible enough. We have proved them not only to be pious and plausible suppositions, but the plain doctrine of the word of God, chap. 1, sect, 1 and 3. He adds for other motives.

2. The beauty and splendour of thevr church; their pompous services; the stateliness and solemn nity of the hierarchy.

3. Their name of Catholic, which they suppose Jheir own due. They have certainly reason to suppose so, if the possession or prescription of seventeen ages can make it their due. I am sure it has fixed it so strongly upon them, that even their adversaries caunot help giving it them on many occasions.

4. The antiquity of many of their doctrines. He should have said All; but this could not be expected from a Protestant.

5. The continued succession of their bishops; their immediate derivation from the apostles,

6. Their title to succeed St. Peter; the suppo * sal and pretence of his personal prerogatives; grounded upon plain scripture, as we have seen, chap, xi., and therefore no vain pretence.

7. The multitude and variety of people which are of their persuasion.

8. Apparent consent with antiquity, in many ceremonials which other churches have rejected; and a pretended, and sometimes an apparent consent with some elder ages in matters doctrinal. Here he minces die matter for fear of allowing too much: yet sannot dissemble, that venerable antiquity is apparently on the Catholic side.

‘ An Appendix, 65

9. The great consent of one part with another, in that part which most of them affirm to he of faith. The great differences commenced among their adversaries. Whose first fathers and teachers, from the very beginning of their pretended Reformation, went quite different ways, even to an utter breach of communion, which never since could be repaired.

10. Their happiness of being instrumental in converting diverse nations. Whereas none of the Reformed Churches have ever yet converted one.

11. The piety and austerity of their religious orders of men and women. The single life of their priests and bishops. The severity of their fasts, and their exterior observances. All which the good-natured Reformation has laid aside.

12. The great reputation of their first bishops for faith and sanctity. The known holiness of some of those persons, whose institutes the religious persons pretend to imitate.

13. Their miracles, true or false, says the Doctor. True, say I, if any faith may be given to the most certain records of all nations.

14. The casualties and accidents that have happened to their adversaries. I suppose he means such as Luther s sudden death after a plentiful supper; Zuinglius*s falling in battle, defending his Reformed Gospel, sword in hand; Oecolampadiuss being found in his bed, oppressed, as Luther will have it (L. de Miss, privata et Unct. Sacerd. T. 7, Wit. fol. 230), by the devil; Calvins dying of a strange complication of distempers, consumed alive by vermin, &c.

1 5. The oblique arts and indirect proceedings

66 An Appendix of some who departed from them. In manifestly corrupting the scripture, as the first Protestants did in all their tnm slat ions, to make it chime with their errors; in quoting falsely the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers; in perpetually misrepresenting in their sermons and writings, the Catholic church and her doctrine; a fault from which the Doctor himself is not exempt, &c.

I have passed over some other things of less weight, which he alleges in the same place; and shall only desire the reader to compare the motives by which the concessions of this prelate, so much esteemed by all Protestants, may retain Catholics at present in the religion of their forefathers, with these motives which St. Augustine alleged, 1300 years ago, against the heretics of his time, and by which he declares himself to have been retained in the Catholic church, L. contra Epistolam Fund. c. 4. “Not to speak;" says he, “ of that true wisdom which you do not “ believe to be in the Catholic church; there are “ many other things which most justly hold me 41 in her communion. 1. The agreement of people 44 and nations. 2. The authority begun by mira- 44 cles, nourished by hope, increased by charity, 44 confirmed by cmtiquity. 3. A succession of pre- 64 lates descending from Peter the apostle, to 4 whom Christ after his resurrection committed 44 his flock, to the present Bishop. Lastly, the 44 very name of Catholic, of which this church 44 alone has not without reason in such manner 44 kept possession, that though all heretics desire 44 to be called Catholics, yet if a stranger ask u them where the Catholics go to church, none of

An Appendix. 67

• them all has the face to point out his now “ church, or meeting-house.” These were St. Augustine s motives for being a Catholic, and these are ours.

Besides, we cannot dissemble that there are many shocking circumstances in the whole management of the pretended Reformation, which deter us from embracing it, whatever temporal inconveniences we are forced to sustain by thi» recusancy.

1. The first reformer, Martin Luther, bad nothing of extraordinary edification in his life ana conversation. On the contrary, all his worki declare him to have been a man of an implacable nature, rigidly self-willed, impatient of contradiction, and rough and violent in his declamations against all those, of what quality soever, who dissented in the least from him. * But what was the most scandalous in a pretended restorer cf the purity of religion, was his marrying a nun, after the most solemn vows by which both he and she had consecrated themselves to God in the state of perpetual continency. In which he was imitated by a great part of the first reformed ministers.

2. He and his first associates were certainly schismatics, because they separated themselves from all churches, pure or impure, true or false, that were then upon earth, and stood alone upon their own bottom. Therefore, if there was any such thing then in the world as the true Church of Christ (as there must always be, if the scripture and creed be true), Luther and his followers separating from all churches, must have separated

ByGoogk —

68 An Appendix, from the true church, and consequently must have been schismatics. At first, says Luther, in the preface to his works, I was alone. Which is confirmed by Dr. Tillotson, Serm. 49, p. 5 88, and Mr. Collier, in his Historical Dictionary, under Martin Luther, where he praises his magnanimity in having opposed himself alone to the whole earth.

3. It appears from his book de Miss. Privata 4’ Unct. Sacerd. T. 7, Wit. fol. 228, §c., that he learnt no small part of his Reformation from the Father of lies, in a nocturnal conference, of which he there gives his readers an account.

4. Those that were the most busy in promoting the Reformation here at home, were for the most part men of most wretched characters, such as King Henry VIII. and the leading men in the government, during the minority of Edward VI., not to speak of the ministry of Queen Elizabeth, the most wicked, says a late Protestant historian (Short View of Eng. Hist. p. 273), that ever was known in any reign.

5. The foundations of the Reformation in England ', were laid in manifold sacrileges, in pulling down monasteries and other houses consecrated to God, rifling and pillaging churches, alienating church lands, &c., as may be seen in the History of the Reformation, by Dr. Heylin.

6. The Reformation was everywhere introduced by lay authority, and for the most part in direct opposition to, and contempt of the bishops, the church guides of divine appointment. A proceeding manifestly irregular and unjustifiable, that in church matters the laitjr with a few of the

A d Appendix. 69 inferior clergy, and those under the ecclesiastical censures, should take upon them to direct those whom Christ appointed to be their directors.

7. England herself, which glories most in the regularity of her Reformation, compared to the tumultuous proceedings of Reformers abroad, owes her present establishment of the church to the lay authority of Queen Elizabeth and her Parliament, in opposition to all the bishops then sitting (who were all but one displaced for their nonconformity), to the whole convocation, and both the universities, that is, in a word, to the whole clergy of the kingdom; as appears from Fuller, L. 9, and Dr. Heylin, Hist, of the Ref. p. 285, 286.

8. Wheresoever the Reformed Gospel was preached, it brought forth seditions, tumults, rebellions, &c., as appears from all the histories of those times. Insomuch, that in France alone the reformed gospellers, besides innumerable other outrages, are said to have destroyed no less than twenty thousand churches. Jerusalem and Babel, p. 158. How little does such a reformation resemble the first establishment of the Church of Christ!

9. The fruits of the Reformation were such as could not spring from a good tree. 1. An innumerable spawn of heresies. 2. Endless dissensions. 3. A perpetual itch of changing, and inconstancy in their doctrine. 4. A theism. Deism, Latitudinarianism, and bare-faced impiety: in fine, a visible change of manners for the worse, as many of their own writers freely acknowledge, and old Erasmus long ago objected to them, Ep.

70 An Appendix.

ad Vultur., where he defies them to show him one who had been reclaimed from vice, by going over to their religion; and declares he never yet met with one who did not seem changed for the worse.

10. That religion is the best to live in, which is the safest to die in, and that in the judgment of dying men, who are not like to be biassed at that time by interest, humour, or passion. Now it is certain, that thousands, who have lived Protes - tants, have desired to die Catholics, and never yet one that had lived a Catholic, desired to die a Protestant; therefore it must be safest for us to stay where we are.

11. That religion is preferable to all others, the doctrine and preaching of which is, and always has been, more forcible and efficacious, in order to the taking off men's minds from the perishable goods of this world, and fixing them ivholly on the great business of eternity; but auch is the doctrine and preaching of the Catholic church, as appears from those multitudes of holy solitaries in our church, that have retired themselves from all the advantages to which their birth or fortune entitled them, and abandoned all earthly hopes for the love of heaven. Whereas the Reformation has never yet produced any such fruits.

12. There was a true saving faith in the days of our forefathers, before the pretended Reformation, by which great nurrfbers are certainly arrived at the happy port of eternal felicity. Our histories are full of instances of the charity, piety, and devotion of kings, bishops, &c. of the

An Appendix. 71 old religion. Therefore, it is safer to follow their faith, than venture our souls in a new raised communion.

13. All ancient pretenders to reformation (i. e. all those that ever undertook to alter or amend the church faith) were condemned by the ancient church for heretics, and are acknowledged to have been such by Protestants themselves. Therefore there is just reason to apprehend lest Protestants walking in the same path may be involved in the same misfortune.

14. In fine, Protestants, to defend the Reformation, condemned in its first appearance by the church guides of divine appointment/ are forced to- have recourse to a rule of faith, which if allowed of, would set all, both ancient and modern heretics, out of the reach of church authority. They are forced to appeal to a tribunal, at which it is not possible that any sectary should be condemned. Such a rule, such a tribunal is the scripture, interpreted not by authority of church guides, but by every one's private judgment: for this, in effect, is making every one's private judgment the supreme judge both of tie scripture and of all controversies in religion, and authorizing him to prefer his own whimsies before the judgment of the whole church. Could

‘it be consistent with the wisdom and providence