Chapter 3

In the same page, you proceed to the consideration of my second Chapter; and therein of the Principles which I gathered out of your Fiat Lux; and which I affirmed, to run through and to animate your whole Discourse, and to be the foundation on which your Superstructure is built. Concerning them all, you say, pag. 21. that in the sense the words do either naturally make out, or in which I understand them, of all the whole you can hardly own any one. Pray Sr, remember that I never pretended to set down your words, but to express your sense in my own. And if I do not make it appear, that there is no one of the Principles mentioned, which you have not (in the sense by me declared) affirmed, and asserted; I will be contented to be thought to have done you some wrong, and my self much more, for want of attending to that Rule of Truth, which I am compelled so often to desire you to give up your self to the conduct of.

The first Principle imputed to your Fiat Lux is, That we received the Gospel first from Rome. To which you say, Wee, that is we English men, received it first from there. Well then, this is one Principle of the Ten; this you own and seek to defend, If you do so in reference to any other, what will become of your hardly one that you can own? You have already one foot over the limits which you have newly prescribed your self; and we shall find you utterly forsaking of them by and by. For the present you proceed to the defence of this Principle and say, But against this you reply, that we received it not first from Rome, but by Joseph of Arimathea from Palestine, as Fiat Lux himself acknowledgeth: Sr, if Fiat Lux say both these things, he cannot mean them in your false contradictory sense, but in his own true one, Wee, that is, wee Englishmen, the now actual inhabitants of this Land and progeny of the Saxons, received first our Gospel and Christendom from Rome, though the Brittans that inhabited the Land before, differing as much from us as Antipodes, had some of them been Christened long before us, and yet the Christendom that prevailed and lasted among the Brittans, even they also as well as we, had it from Rome too; mark this likewise. This matter must be called over again afterwards, and therefore I shall here be the more brief upon it. In my first Answer, I shewed you not only that your position was not true; but also, that on supposition it were so, it would not in the least advance your intention. Here you acknowledg that the Brittans at first received not the Gospel from Rome; but reply two things, first, that belongs not to us Englishmen or Saxons. To which I shall now only say, that if because the Brittans have been conquered, we who are now the inhabitants of Brittain, may not be thought to have received the Gospel from them, from whom the Brittans at first received it, seeing it was never utterly extinct in Brittany from its first plantation, then much less can the present inhabitants of the City of Rome, which has been conquered oftener than Brittain, be thought to have received the Gospel from them by whom it was first delivered to the old Romans. For though I confess that the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles made great havock of the Ancient Brittans in some parts of this Island, yet was it not comparable to that which was made at Rome; which at length Totilas, after it had been taken and sacked more than once before, marching out of it against Belisarius, left as desolate as a wilderness without one living soul to inhabit it. Ipse (Totilas) cum suarum copiarum parte progreditur, Romanos qui Senatorii erant ordinis secum trahens; alia omni urbanorum multitudine vel virilis muliebrisque sexus, & pueris in Campaniae agres missis: ita ut Romae nemo hominum restaret, sed vasta ibi esset solitudo, says Procopius, Hist, Goth. l. 3. Concerning which action says Sigonius de Imper. Occid. lib. 19. Vrbs Roma incolis omnibus amotis, prorsus est destituta: memorandum inter pauca exempla humanae fortune ludibrium, ac spectaculum ipsis etiam hostibus, quanquam ab omni humanitate remotissimis, miserandum. The City of Rome, all its Inhabitants being removed, was wholly desolate, an unparalleled reproach of humane condition, and a spectacle of pity to the very enemies, though most remote from all humanity! The next inhabitants of it, were a mixture of Greeks, Thracians, and other Nations brought in by Belisarius: You may go now and reproach the Brittans if you please, with their being conquered by the Saxons; in the mean time pray give me a reason, why the present Inhabitants of England, may not date their reception of Christianity from the first planting of it in this Island, as well as you suppose the present Inhabitants of Rome may do theirs, from the time wherein it was first preached to the old Romans? But you except again; that the Christendom that prevailed and lasted among the Brittans before the coming of the Saxons, came from Rome too; you bid me, mark that likewise. I do consider what you say, and desire you to prove it: wherein yet I will not be very urgent, because I will not put you upon impossibilities; and your incompetency to give the least color to this Remarkable Assertion, shall be discovered in our further progress. For the present, I shall only mind you, that the Christianity which prevailed in Brittany, was that which continued among the Brittans in Wales, after the conquest of these parts of the Island by the Saxons; and that, that came not from Rome, is manifest from the customs which they observed and insisted on, differing from those of Rome, and your refusal to admit those of that Church, the story whereof you have in Beda lib. 2. cap. 2. I know, it may be rationally replied, that Rome might, after the time of the first preaching of the Gospel in Brittain, have invented many new customs, which might be strange to the Brittans at the coming of Austin; for indeed so they had done: but this exception will here take no place; for the customs the Brittish Church adhered to, were such as having their Rise and occasion in the East, were never admitted at Rome, and so from there could not be transmitted here.

But there were also other exceptions put in, to your application of this principle to your purpose, upon supposition that there were any truth in the matter of fact asserted by you. For, suppose that those who from beyond sea first preached the Gospel to the Saxons, came from Rome, yes, were sent by the Bishop, or if you please the Pope of Rome; I ask, whether it was his religion, or the religion of Jesus Christ that they brought with them? Did the Pope first find it out? Or did they publish it in the name of the Pope? You say, it was the Pope's religion, not invented but professed by him, and from him derived to us by his Missioners. Well, and what more; for all this was before supposed in my enquiry, and made the foundation of that which we sought further after. I supposed the Pope professed the religion which he sent; and your courtly expression derived to us by his Missioners, is but the same in sense and meaning with my homely phrase, they that preached it were sent by him. On this I enquire, whether it were to be esteemed his religion or no; that is, any more his, than it is the religion of every one that professes it; or did those that were sent baptize in his name, or teach us that the Pope was crucified for us? You answer, that he sent them to preach: I see — Nil opus est te Circumagi, quendam volo visere non tibi notum. You understand not what I enquire after; but if that be all you have to say, as it was before supposed, so what matter is it, I pray, who planted, and who watered; it was the religion of Christ that was preached, and God that gave the increase: Christ lives still, his Word abides still, but the planters and waterers are dead long ago. Again, what though we received the Gospel from Rome? Does it therefore follow, that we received all the doctrines of the present Church of Rome at the same time? Pope Gregory knew little of the present Roman doctrine about the Pope of Rome. What was broached of it, he condemned in another, (even John of Constantinople, who fasted for a kind of Popedome,) and professed himself an obedient servant to his good Lord the Emperor. Many a good doctrine has been lost at Rome since those old days, and many a new fancy broached, and many a tradition of men taught for a doctrine of truth. Hipolyte, sic est; Thesi vultus amo, Illos priores quos tulit quondam puer, Quum prima puras barba signaret genas, Et ora flavus tenera tingebat rubor. We love the Church of Rome, as it was in its purity and integrity, in the days of her youth and chastity, before she was deflowered by false worship; but what is that to the present Roman carnal confederacy? If then any in this nation did receive their religion from Rome, as many of the Saxons had Christianity declared to them, by some sent from Rome for that purpose; yet it does not at all follow, that they received the present religion of Rome. Hei mihi qualis? — quantum mutatur ab illa? which of old she professed. Multa dies variusque labor mutabilis aevi, Rettulit in pejus. And this sad alteration, declension, and change, we may bewail in her, as the Prophet did the like apostasy in the Church of the Jews of old, How is the faithful city become a harlot? It was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers; your silver is become dross, your wine mixed with water. He admires that it should be so; was not ignorant how it became so; no more are others in reference to your apostasy.

And what if we had received from you, or by your means, the religion that is now professed at Rome, I mean the whole of it; yet we might have received that with it, namely the Bible, which would have made it our duty, to examine, try, and reject any thing in it, for which we saw from there just cause so to do; unless we should be condemned for that, for which the Bereans are so highly commended. So that neither is your position true, nor if it were so would it at all advantage your pretensions.

I adde also, Did not the Gospel come from another place to Rome, as well as to us, or, was it first preached there? This you have culled out, as supposing your self able to say something to it; and what is it? Properly speaking, it came not so to Rome, as it came to us: for one of the twelve fountains, no, two of the thirteen, and those the largest and greatest, were transferred to Rome, which they watered with their blood. We had never any such standing fountain of our Christian Religion here, but only a stream derived to us from there. It is the hard hap it seems of England, to claim any privilege or reputation, that may stand in the way of some mens designs. No Apostle, nor apostolical person, must be allowed to preach the Gospel to us, lest we should perk up into competition with Rome. But though Rome it seems must always be excepted, yet I hope you do not in general conclude our condition beneath that of any place, where the Gospel at first was preached, by one or two Apostles, so as to cry, Properly speaking, it came not to us at all. What think you of Jerusalem, where Christ himself and his twelve Apostles all of them preached the Gospel? Or what think you of Capernaum, that was lifted up to Heaven, in the privilege of the means of light granted for a while to them? Do you think our condition worse than theirs? The two fountains you mention, were opened at Antioch in Syria, as well as at other places, before they conveyed one drop of their treasures to Rome; which whether one of them ever did by his personal presence, is very questionable. And by this rule of yours, though England may not, yet every place where Saint Peter and Saint Paul preached the Gospel, may contend with Rome as to this privilege. And what will you then get by your triumphing over us? Non vides id manticae quòd à tergo est: When men are intent upon a supposed advantage, they oftentimes overlook real inconveniences that lye ready to seize upon them, as it befalls you more than once. Besides there is nothing in the world more obscure, than by whom, or by what means the Gospel was first preached at Rome: By Saint Paul it is certain it was not: for before ever he came there, there was a great number converted to the faith, as appears from his Epistle, written about the fourteenth year of Claudius, and the fifty third of Christ. Nor yet by Peter; for not at present to insist on the great uncertainty whether ever he was there or no, which shall afterwards be spoken to, there is nothing more certain, than that about the sixth year of Claudius, and forty fifth of Christ, he was at Antioch (Galatians 2:—; Baronius makes the third of Claudius, and the forty fifth of Christ to contemporize, but upon a mistake) and some say he abode there a good while, sundry years, and that upon as good authority, as any is produced for his coming to Rome. But it is generally granted, that there was a Church founded at Rome that year, but by whom, [illegible], (as Socrates said of the preference of the condition of the living or dead) is known to God alone, of mortal men not to any: Jam sumus ergo pares. For, to confess the truth to you, I know not certainly who first preached the Gospel in Britain; some say Peter, some Paul, some Simon Zelotes, most Joseph of Arimathea, as I have elsewhere showed; by whom certainly I know not: but some one it was or more, whom God sent upon his errand, and with his message. No more do you know who preached it first at Rome, though in general it appears that some of them at least were of the Circumcision, from where the very first converts of that Church, were variously minded about the observation of Mosaical rites and ceremonies. And I doubt not but God in his infinitely holy wisdom and providence, left the springs of Christian Religion, as to matter of fact, in the first introductions of it into the nations of the world, in so much darkness, as to the knowledge of after-times, to obviate those towering thoughts of preeminency, which he foresaw that some men from external advantages would entertain, to the no small prejudice of the simplicity of the Gospel, and ruin of Christian humility. As far as appears from story, the Gospel was preached in England, before any Church was founded at Rome: It was so, says Gildas, Summo tempore Tiberii Caesaris, that is, extremo; about the end of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who died in the thirty ninth year of Christ, five or six years at least before the foundations of the Roman Church were laid; [illegible]. These things we must speak to, because you suppose them of importance to your cause.

The second Assertion ascribed to your Fiat in the Animadversions is, That from where and from whom we first received our Religion, there and with them we must abide therein, to them we must repair for guidance; and return to their rule and conduct, if we have departed from them. To which you now say, This Principle as it is never delivered by Fiat Lux, though you put it upon me, so is it in the latitude it carries, and wherein you understand it, absolutely false, never thought of by me, and indeed impossible: For how can we abide with them in any truth, who may not perhaps abide in it themselves? Great part of Flanders was first converted by English men, and yet are they not obliged to accompany the English in our now present ways. I am glad you confess this Principle now to be false; it was sufficiently proved so to be in the Animadversions, and your whole Discourse rendered thereby useless: For to what purpose will the preceding Assertion so often inculcated by you serve, if this be false? For what matter is it from where or whom we receive the profession of Religion, if there be no obligation upon us to continue in their communion, any further than as we judge them to continue in the truth? And to what purpose do you avoid the consideration of the Reasons and Causes of our not abiding with you, and manage all your Charge upon the general head of our departure, if we may have just cause by your own concession so to do? It is false then by your own acknowledgement, and I am as sure, in the sense which I understand it in, that it is yours. And you labor with all your art to prove and confirm it, both in your Fiat, pag. 44, 45, 46, 47. and in this very Epistle, pag. 38, 39, 40, 41, &c. On the account that the Gospel came to us from Rome, you expressly adjudge the preeminence over us to Rome, and determine that her we must all hear, and obey, and abide with. But if you may say and unsay, assert and deny, avow and disclaim at your pleasure, as things make for your advantage, and think to evade the owning of the whole drift and scope of your Discourse, by having expressed your self in a loose flourish of words; it will be to no great purpose further to talk with you: Quo te[•]eam vultus mutantem Protea nodo? To lay fast hold, and not startle at a new shape, was the counsel his daughter gave to Menelaus. And I must needs urge you to leave off all thoughts of evading, by such changes of your hue, and to abide by what you say. I confess, I believe you never intended knowingly to assert this Principle in its whole latitude, because you did not, as it should seem, consider how little it would make for your advantage, seeing so many would come in for a share in the privilege intimated in it with your Roman Church, and you do not in any thing love competitors. But you would fain have the Conclusion hold as to your Roman Church only; those that have received the Gospel from her, must always abide in her communion. That this Assertion is not built on any general foundation of Reason or Authority, your self now confess. And that you have no special privilege to plead in this Cause, has been proved in the Animadversions, whereof you are pleased to take no notice.