Chapter 17

You proceed pag. 70. to the animadversions on your 13. Paragraph, entitled Scripture, wherein how greatly and causelessly it is by you undervalued, is fully declared. But whatever is offered in it for the discovery of your miscarriage and your own conviction, you wisely pass over without taking notice of it at all; and only repeat again your case to the same purpose, and almost in the very same words you had done before. Now this I have already considered and removed out of our way, so that it is altogether needless to divert again to the discussion of it. That which we have to do, for the answering of all your cavils and objections in and about the case you frame and propose, is, to declare and manifest the Scriptures' sufficiency for the revelation of all necessary truths therein affording us a stable rule of faith every way suited to the decision of all differences in and about religion, and to keep Christians in perfect peace, as it did of old; and this we have already done. Why this proper work of the Scripture is not in all places and at all times effected, proceeds from the lusts and prejudices of men, which when by the grace of God they shall be removed, it will no longer be obstructed.

Your next attempt p. 72. is upon my story of the progress and corruption of Christian religion in the world, with respect to that of your own. Yours, you tell us, is serious, temperate, and sober; every way as excellent as Suffenus thought his verses. Mine, you say, is wrought with defamation and wrath against all ages and people; very good. I doubt not but you thought it was fit you should say so, though you knew no reason why, nor could fix on any thing in it for your warrant in these intemperate reproaches. Do I say any thing but what the stories of all ages, and the experience of Christendom do proclaim? Is it now a defamation to report what the learned men of those days have recorded, what good men bewailed, and the sad effects whereof the world long groaned under, and was at length ruined by? What wrath is in all this? May not men be warned to take heed of falling into the like evils by the miscarriages of them that went before them without wrath and defamation? Are the books of the Kings, Chronicles, and Prophets fraught with wrath and defamation because they report, complain of, and reprove the sad apostasies of the church in those days, with the wickedness of the kings, priests and people that it was composed of, and declare the abomination of those ways of false worship, licentiousness of life, violence and oppression, whereby they provoked God against them to their ruin? If my story be not true, why do you not disprove it? If it be, why do you exclaim against it? Do I not direct you to authors of unquestionable credit complaining of the things which I report from them? And if you know not that many others may be added to these by me named, testifying the same things, you know very little of the matter you undertake to treat about. But we need go no further than your self to discover how devoid of all pretence your reproaches are, and that by considering the exceptions which you put in to my story, which may rationally be supposed to be the most plausible you could invent, and directed against those parts of it which you imagined were most obnoxious to your charge. I shall therefore consider them in the order wherein they are proposed, and discover whether the keenness of your assault answer the noise of your out-cry at its entrance.

First, you observe, that I say, Joseph of Arimathea was in England, but that he taught the same religion that is now in England. To which you reply: But what is that religion? And this enquiry I have observed you elsewhere to insist upon. But I told you before, that I intend the Protestant religion and that as confirmed and established by law in this kingdom; and the advantage you endeavour from some differences that are among us, is little to your purposes, and less to the commendation of your ingenuity. For besides that there are differences of as high a nature, and considering the principles you proceed upon of greater importance among your selves, and those agitated with as great animosities and subtleties, as those among any sort of men at variance about religion in the world, you that so earnestly seek and press after a forbearance for your profession besides and against the established law, should not, me thinks, at the same time, be so forward in reproaching us, that there are dissenters in the kingdom from some things established by law, especially considering how utterly inconsiderable for the most part they are, in comparison of the things wherein you differ from us all. This I fear, is the reward that they have cause to expect from many of you, who are inclined to desire that you among others might be partakers of indulgence from the extremity of the law, though from others of you for whose sakes they are inclined to those desires, I hope they may look for better things, and such as accompany charity, moderation, and peace, so that your first exception gives a greater impeachment to your own candor and ingenuity than to the truth or sobriety of my story.

You proceed and say, that I tell you that the story of Fugatius and Damianus Missioners of Pope Eleutherius, is suspected by me for many reasons, and reply, because you assign none, I am therefore moved to think they may be all reduced to one, which is that you will not acknowledge any good thing ever to have come from Rome. But see what it is for a man to give himself up to vain surmizes. You know full well, that I plead, that you are no way concerned in what was done at Rome in the dayes of Eleutherius, who was neither Pope nor Papist, nor knew any thing of that which we reject as Popery, so that I had no reason to disclaim or deny any good thing that was then done at Rome, or by any from there. Besides, I can assure you, that to this day I would willingly own, embrace, and rejoyce in any good that is, or may be done there; may I be truly and impartially informed of it; and should be glad to hear of more then unprejudiced men have been able of late ages to inform us of. I am far from making an enclosure of all goodness to any party of men in the world, and far from judging or condemning all, of any party, or supposing that no good thing can be done by them or proceed from them. Such conceits are apt to flow from the high towring thoughts of infallibility and supremacy, and the confining of Christianity to some certain company of men, in some parts of the world, which I am a stranger to. I know no party among Christians that is in all things to be admired, nor any that is in all things to be condemned; and can perfectly free you, if you are capable of satisfaction, from all fears of my dislike of any thing, because it came, or comes from Rome. For to me it is all one, from where truth and virtue come. They shall be welcome for their own sakes. But you seem to be guided in these and the like surmizes by your own humor, principles and way of managing things in religion; a Lesbian rule, which will suffer you to depart from the paths of truth and charity, no oftener then you have a mind so to do. To deliver you from your mistake in this particular, I shall now give you some of those reasons, which beget in me a suspicion concerning the truth of that story about Fagatius and Damianus, as it is commonly told, only intimating the heads of them with all possible brevity.

First then I suppose the whole story is built on the authority of the Epistle of Elutherius to Lucius, which is yet extant: other foundations of it, that I know of, is neither pleaded nor pretended. Now there want not reasons to prove that Epistle as the most of those fathered on the old Bishops of Rome, to be supposititious. For 1. The author of that Epistle condemneth the Imperial Laws, and rejecteth them as unmeet to be used in the civil government of this nation, which Eleutherius neither ought to have done, nor could safely do. 2. It supposeth Lucius to have sent to Eleutherius to have the Roman Law sent to him, which had been long before exercised in this nation, and was well known in the whole province, as he witnesseth of dayes before these; Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Brittannos.

2. The first reporters of this story agree not in the time wherein the matter mentioned in it, should fall out. Beda lib. 1. cap. 4. assigns it to the year 156. which was twenty two years before Eleutherius was Bishop, as Baronius manifests. Henricus de Erfordia ascribes it to the nineteenth year of the reign of Verus the Emperour who reigned not so many years at all. Ado refers it to the time of Commodus with some part of whose reign the Episcopacy of Eleutherius did indeed contemporate. 2. Geoffrey of Monmouth the chief promoter of this report, joyneth it with so many lyes and open fictions, as may well draw the truth of the whole story into question. So that divers would have us believe that some such thing was done at one time or other, but when they cannot tell. 3. Both the Epistle of Eleutherius, and the reporters of it, do suppose that Lucius to whom he wrote, was an absolute monarch in England, King over the whole kingdom with supreme authority and power, ruling his subjects by the advice of his nobles, without being obnoxious to or dependent in his government on any others. But this supposition is so openly repugnant to the whole story of the state of things in the province of England in those dayes, so that it is beyond the wit of man to make any reconciliation between them: for besides that Caesar and Tacitus do both plainly affirm, that in the dayes of the Romans [illegible] upon this Island, there was no such King or monarch among the Brittans, but that they were all divided into several Toparchies, and [illegible] mortal feuds and variance among themselves, [illegible] for the conquest of them all, it was now become a Presidiary province of the Roman Empire, and had been so from the dayes of Claudius, as Suetonius, Tacitus and Dio inform us. Especially was it reduced into, and settled in that form by Pub. Ostorius in the dayes of Nero, upon the conquest of Boadicia Queen of the Iceni, and fully subjected in its remainders to the Roman yoak and laws, after some struglings for liberty, by Julius Agricola in the dayes of Vespatian, as Tacitus assures us in the life of his father in law. In this estate Brittan continued under Nerva and Trajan, the whole province being afterwards secured by Hadrian from the incursion of the Picts and other barbarous nations, with the defence of his famous walls, whereof Spartianus gives us an account. In this condition did the whole province continue to the death of Commodus, under the rule of Vlpius Marcellus as we are informed by Dio and Lampridius. This was the state of affairs in Britain, when the Epistle of Eleutherius is supposed to be written. And for my part I cannot discover where this Lucius should reign with all that sovereignty ascribed to him. Baronius thinks he might do so beyond the Picts wall, which utterly overthrows the whole story, and leaves the whole province of Brittan, utterly unconcerned in the coming of Fugatius and Damianus into this Island. These are some, and many other reasons of my suspition I could add, manifesting it to be far more just then yours that I had no reason for it, but only because I would not acknowledge that any good could come from Rome.

Let us now see what you further except against the account I gave of the progress and declension of religion in these, and other nations. You add, then say you, succeeded times of luxury, sloth, pride, ambition, scandalous riots, and corruption both of faith and manners over all the Christian world, both princes, priests, prelates and people. But you somewhat pervert my words, so to make them liable to your exception: for as by me they are laid down, it seems you could find no occasion against them. I tell you p. 253. that after these things a sad decay in faith and holiness of life befell professors, not only in this nation, but for the most part all the world over; the stories of those days are full of nothing more than the oppression, luxury, sloth of rulers, the pride, ambition and unseemly scandalous contests for preeminence of sees, and extent of jurisdiction among bishops, the sensuality and ignorance of the most of men. Now whether these words are not agreeable to truth and sobriety, I leave to every man to judge, who has any tolerable acquaintance with history, or the occurrences of the ages respected in them. Your reply to them is, not a grain of virtue or goodness we must think in so many Christian kingdoms and ages: but why must you think so? Who induces you thereunto? When the Church of Israel was professedly far more corrupted than I have intimated the state of the Christian Church in any part of the world to have been, yet there was more than a grain of virtue or goodness, not only in Elijah, but in the meanest of those seven thousand who within the small precincts of that kingdom had not bowed the knee to Baal. I never in the least questioned, but that in that declension of Christianity which I intimated, and remission of the most from their pristine zeal, but that there were thousands and ten thousands that kept their integrity and mourned for all the abominations that they saw practiced in the world. Pray reflect a little upon the condition of the Asian churches mentioned in the Revelation. The discovery made of their spiritual state by Christ himself (chap. 2, 3) was within less than forty years after their first planting, and yet you see most of them had left their first love, and were decayed in their faith and zeal. In one of them there were but a few names remaining that had any life and integrity for Christ; the body of the Church having only a name to live, being truly and really dead, as to any acts of spiritual life, wherein our communion with God consists. And do you make it so strange, that whereas the churches that were planted and watered by the Apostles themselves and enriched with many excellent gifts and graces, should within the space of less than forty years, by the testimony of the Lord Christ himself, so decay and fall off from their first purity, faith and works, that other churches who had not their advantages, should do so within the space of four hundred years, of which season I speak? I fear your vain conceit of being rich and wanting nothing, of infallibility and impossibility to stand in need of any reformation, of being as good as ever any church was, or as you need to be, is that which has more prejudiced your church in particular than you can readily imagine. And what I affirmed of those other churches, I know well enough how to prove out of the best and most approved authors of those days. If besides historians which give sufficient testimony to my observation, you will please to consult, Chrysostome Hom. 3. de Incomprehens. Dei natur. Hom. 19. in Ac. 9. Hom. 15. in Heb. 8. and Augustin. lib. de Fid. & bon. op. cap. 19. you will find that I had good ground for what I said. And what if I had minded you of the words of Salvian de provid. lib. 3. Quemcunque invenies in Ecclesia non aut [illegible]briosum, aut adulternus, aut fornicatorem, aut raptorem, aut ganeonem, aut latronem, aut homicidam, & quod omnibus potius est, prope haec cuncta sine fine? Should I have escaped your censure of giving you a story false and defamatory, laden with foul language against all nations, ages and conditions, that none can like who bear any respect either to modesty, religion or truth: ne saevi magne Sacerdos. What ground have you for this intemperate railing? What instance can you give of any thing of this nature? What expression giving countenance to this severity? If you will exercise yourself in writing fiats, you must of necessity arm yourself with a little patience to hear sometimes things that do not please you, and not presently cry out, defamations, false, wrath, foul language, &c. I suppose you know that not long after the times wherein I say religion as the power and purity of it much decayed in the world, that God brought an overflowing scourge and deluge of judgements upon most of the nations of Europe, that made profession of Christianity. What in sadness do you think might be the cause of that dispensation of his providence? Do you think that all things were well enough among them, and that in all things their ways pleased God? Is such an apprehension suitable to the goodness, mercy, love and faithfulness of God? Or must he lose the glory of all his properties in the administration of his righteous judgements, rather than you will acknowledge a demerit in them whom he took away as with a flood? So indeed the Jews would have had it of old under their sufferings; but he pleaded and vindicated the equality and righteousness of his ways against their proud repinings. Pray be as angry with me as you please, but take heed of justifying any against God: the task will prove too hard for you. And yet to this purpose are your following contemptuous expressions; for to my observation, that after these times, the Goths and Vandals with others, overflowed the Christian world, you subjoin, either to punish them we may believe, or to teach them how to mend their manners. Sir, I know not what you believe, or do not believe, or whether you believe any thing of this kind or no. But I will tell you what I am persuaded all the world believes, who know the story of those times, and are not atheists: and it is, that though the Goths and Vandals, Saxons, Huns, Franks and Longobards, with the rest of the barbarous nations, who divided the provinces of the Western Empire among them, had it may be no more thoughts to punish the nations professing Christianity, for their sins, wickedness and superstition, (though one of their chief leaders proclaimed himself the scourge of God against them) than had the King of Babylon to punish Judah for her sins, and idolatry in especial, yet that God ordered them, no less than he did him in his providence for those ends which you so scorn and despise, that is, either to punish them for their sins, or to provoke them to leave them by repentance. Take heed of being a scoffer in these things, lest your bands be made strong. God is not unrighteous who exercises judgement. The Judge of all the world will do right. Nor does he afflict any people, much less extirpate them from the face of the earth without a cause. Many wicked, provoking, sinful idolatrous nations, he spares in his patience and forbearance, and will yet do so; but he destroys none without a cause. And all that I intended by the remembrance of the sins of those nations, which were exposed to devastation, was but to show that their destruction was of themselves.

You leap to another clause which you rend out of my discourse, that these Pagans took at last to Christianity, and say, happily because it was a more loose and wicked life then their own Pagan Profession. But are you not ashamed of this trifling? Does this disprove my Assertion? Is it not true? Did they not do so? Did not the above mentioned Nations when they had settled themselves in the Provinces of the Empire, take upon them the Profession of the Christian Religion? Did not the Saxons do so in Brittany the Francks in Gaule, the Goths and Longobards in Italy, the Vandals in Africk, the Huns in Bannonia? I cannot believe you are so ignorant in these things, as your exceptions bespeak you. Nor do I well understand what you intend by them, they are so frivolous and useless, nor surely can any man in his right wits suppose them of any validity to impeach the evidence of the known stories, which my discourse relates to.

But you lay more weight on what you cull out in the next place, which as you have layed it down is, That these now Christened Pagans advanced the Pope's authority, when Christian Religion was now grown degenerate, and say, now we come to know how the Roman Bishop became a Patriarch above the rest, by means namely of the new converted Pagans. But I wonder you speak so nicely in their chief affair. As though that were the question whether the Bishop of Rome according to some Ecclesiastical constitutions were made a Patriarch or no, and that whether he were not esteemed to have some kind of preheminence in respect of those other Bishops, who upon the same account were so stiled. When we have occasion to speak of this question we shall not be backward to declare our thoughts in it. For the present you represent the Pope to us as the absolute head of the Church Catholic, the supreme judge of all controversies in Religion, the sole fountain of unity, and spring of all Ecclesiastical jurisdiction, &c. Nor did I say that your Pope was by these Nations after their conversion advanced to the height you labor now to fix him in, but only that his authority was signally advanced by them, which is so certain a truth that your own historians and annalists openly proclaim it, and you cannot deny it unless you would be esteemed the most ungrateful person in the world. But this is your way and manner; all that is done for you is mere duty, which when it is done you will thank no man for. Are all the grants of power, privileges and possessions made to your Papal See, by the Kings of this Nation both before and since the Conquest, by the Kings of France, and Emperours of the Posterity of Charles the Great, by the Kings of Poland, Denmark and Sweden, by the Longobards in Italy not worth your thanks? It is well you have got your ends; the net may be cast away when the fish is caught.

But an odd chance, you say, it was that they should think of advancing him to what they never heard either himself or any other advanced to before among Christians: but yet this was done, and no such odd chance neither. Your Popes had for a season before been aspiring to greater heights then formerly they had attained to, and used all ways possible to commend themselves and their authority, not what truly it was, but what they would have it to be, to all with whom they had to do; and thereupon by sundry means and artifices imposed upon the nations some undue conceits of it, though it was not fully nor so easily admitted of as it may be you may imagine. But in many things they were willing to gratify him in his pretensions, little knowing the tendency of them; many things he took the advantage of their streights and divisions to impose upon them; many things he obtained from them by flattery and carnal compliances, until by sundry serpentine advances he had brought them all to his bow, and some of the greatest of them to his stirrup.

It was yet more odd, say you, and strange that all Christendom should calmly submit to a power set up anew by young converted Pagans: no Prince or Bishop either here or of any either Christian Kingdom either then or ever after to this day excepting against it. Had not all the Bishops and Priests of Africa, Egypt, Syria, Thrace, Greece and all the Christian world acknowledged by an hundred experiments the supreme spiritual authority of the Roman Patriarch in all times before this deluge of Goths and Vandals? But why do I expostulate with you, who write these things not to judicious readers, but to fools and children, who are not more apt to tell a truth, then to believe a lie. But Sir, you shall quickly see whose discourse, yours or mine, stand in need of weak and credulous reader. That which you have in this place to oppose is only this, that your Papal authority received a signal advancement, by and among the Northern Nations, who after long wars divided the Provinces of the Western Empire among them. Now this is so broad a truth, that nothing but brutish ignorance, or obstinate perverseness can possibly cause any man to call it into question. It was not absolutely the setting up of the Papacy, but an accession to the Papal power and authority which I ascribed to that original. And this if you dare to deny, it were easy out of your own Annalists to overwhelm you with instances in the confirmation of it. But yet neither were your concessions made, nor his assumptions carried on in that silence which you fancy, when you imagine, that his aspirings were neither taken notice of, nor opposed, but that all Christendom should calmly submit to them. Where do you think you are, that you talk at this rate? Did you never read of any opposition made in former days to your pretended Papal power? None at all? From no Kings, no Princes, no Bishops, no parts of Christendom? Happy man, who has lived so quietly as you seem to have done, and so little concerned in things past or present. Did you never read or hear of the Declarations and Edicts of Emperors and Kings, of determinations of Councils, writings of learned men in all ages against your Papal usurpations? Did you never hear how before the times that we now talk of, Irenaeus reproved Victor, how Cyprian opposed Cornelius and Stephen, how the Councils of Africa admonished Celestine and Boniface of their miscarriages in their claims of power and jurisdiction? Are you an utter stranger to the opposition made by the German Emperors to your Hildebrandine supremacy, with the books written against your pretensions to that purpose? Have you not read your own Baronius a great part of whose voluminous Annals consists in his endeavours to vindicate your Papal power from the open opposition that was made to its introduction in every age? You must needs sleep quietly, seeing you lie so far from noise. I have already in part let you see the fondness of this dream, that your Papal supremacy was ever calmly submitted to, and have manifested that it was publicly condemned before it was born. But because I then confined myself to more ancient times than those which are now under discourse, I shall mind you of a few instances of the opposition made to it, either about or presently after that signal advancement, which I affirmed that it received from the newly converted Nations of the West.

About the year 608, presently after the Saxons had received Christianity, and therewithall contributed their power, some of them at least to the furtherance of your Papal claim, which was then set on foot, though in a much inferiour degree to what you have since promoted it to, it was publickly excepted against and disclaimed by a Convention or Synod of the British Clergy, who denyed that they owed any subjection to the See of Rome, or any respect, but such as Christians ought to bear one towards another, and would not give place to its authority in things of very small weight and moment (Bede, Hist. lib. 2, cap. 2; Concil. Anglic. p. 188). The sixth general Council that condemned Pope Honorius for a heretic, in 681, with the Second Nicene, in 787, which confirmed the same sentence, do shrewdly impeach your present supremacy. In the fourth Council of Constantinople, in 870, the Epanagnosticum of Basilius the Emperor to the Synod approved by them all, begins thus: Cum Divina & benignissima Providentia nobis guberncula universalis navis commisit, omne studium arripuimus, & ante publicas curas, ecclesiasticas contentiones dissolvendi: whereas the gracious Divine Providence has committed to us the government of the universal ship, we have taken all occasion before other public cares to dissolve or compose ecclesiastical dissensions. How suitable these expressions of the Emperor are to your present pretensions, your self may judge. And having mentioned that Synod which you call the eighth general Council, because of its opposition to the learned Photius, I shall only ask of you, whether you think there was no exception made to your supremacy by that Photius, with the Emperors and Bishops of the East, who consulted with him, and afterwards justified him against the censures procured against him by Pope Nicholas and Hadrian? Do not all your writers to this day complain of this opposition made to you by Photius? What think you of the Council of Frankford assembled by Charles the Great, which so openly condemned that doctrine which Pope Hadrian and the Roman Clergy with him laboured so earnestly to promote, as we shall afterwards shew? In the same order you may place the Councils that deposed their Popes, as did one at Rome under Otho the Emperor, John the 12th, a sweet Bishop, in 963; another at Sutrinum in 1046, when Cerberus as Baronius himself confesseth, ruled at Rome, in 1044, n. 5. Three Popes at once domineering there, Vno contra duos, says Sigibert, & duobus contraunum, de Papatu contendentibus, Rex contra eos vadit, eosque Canonica & Imperiali Censura deponit: one against two, and two against one contending about the Papacy, the King went against them all, and deposed them by canonical and imperial censure. Or as Platina Vit. Greg. 6: Henricus habita Synodo, tria ista teterrima monstra abdicare se magistratu coegit: Henry calling a Synod compelled those three filthy monsters (Benedict, Silvester and Gregory) to renounce their magistracy or Papacy. Have you not heard how many Synods and Councils were convened against the usurpations and innovations of Gregory the seventh, as at Worms, Papia, Brixia, Ments, and elsewhere? What think you of the Assembly at Clarendon here in England, in 1164, where it was decreed says Matth. Paris, juxta antiquas Regni consuitudines non licere vel Archiepiscopis vel Episcopis vel aliis Personis exire Regnum absque licentia Regis, that according to the ancient customs of the Kingdom it was not lawful for any Archbishops, Bishops or other persons to depart the Kingdom without the leave of the King; that is to go to Rome, and that in all appeals, ultimo perveniendum ad Regem ita ut non debeat ulterius procedi sine assensu Domini Regis, the last is to be made to the King, without whose assent no further process ought to be made. For opposition to which decree Thomas of Becket had the hap to become a traitor and a saint. The stories of the Patriarchs of Ravenna in times more remote, and in those of the Council of Constance and Basil in latter ages are too well known to be particularly again insisted on. Were Princes more silent than Synods? Reconcile if you are able the laws of Charles the Great and his son Lewis with their Popes now claimed authority. Henry the second of Germany both deposed Popes and limited their power. Henry 3 attempted no less, though with less success. See Sigibert Chron. in 1046; Platin. vita Gregor. 6; Sigon. de Reg. lib. 8. From that time forward until the Reformation no one age can be instanced in, wherein great, open and signal opposition was not made to the Papal authority, which you seek again to introduce. The instances already given are sufficient to convince the vanity of your pretence, that never any opposition was made to it.

Of the same nature is that which you nextly affirm, of all the Bishops and Priests of Africa, Egypt, Syria, Thrace, Greece, and all the Christian world by a hundred experiments acknowledging the supreme spiritual authority of the Roman Patriarch. I must I see still mind you of what it is that you are to speak to. It is not the Patriarchate of your Pope, with the authority, privileges and preeminences which by virtue thereof he lays claim to, but his singular succession to Christ, and Peter, in the absolute headship of the whole Catholic Church, that you are treating about. Now supposing you may be better skilled in the affairs of the Eastern Church than for ought as I can yet perceive you are in those of the Western, let me crave this favor of you, that you would direct me to one of those hundred experiments, whereby the acknowledgment you mention, preceding the conversion of the Northern Nations, may be confirmed. It will I confess to you be a singular kindness, seeing I know not where to find any one of that nature within the time limited; no, to tell you the truth, since to this day. For I suppose you will not imagine that the feigned professions of subjection, which poverty and hopes of supplies from the Court of Rome has extorted of late from some few mean persons whose titles only were of any consideration in the world, will deserve any place in this disquisition. Until you are pleased therefore to favor me with your information, I must abide in my ignorance of any such experiments as those which you intimate.

The artifices I confess of your Popes in former days to draw men, especially in the Eastern Church to an acknowledgement of that authority, which in their several seasons they claimed, have been many, and their success various. Sometimes they obtained a seeming compliance in some; and sometimes they procured their authors very shrewd rebukes. It may not be amiss to recount some of them.

Upon all occasions they set forth themselves; the dignity and preheminence of your See, with swelling encomiums and titles, asserting their own primacy and power. Such self assumings are many of the old Papal Epistles stuffed withall. A sober humble Christian cannot but nauseate at the reading of them. For it is easily discernable how antievangelical such courses are, and how unbecoming all that pretend themselves to be Disciples of Jesus Christ; from these are their chiefest testimonies in this case taken; and we may say of them all, they bear witness to themselves, and that contrary to the Scripture, and their witness is not true.

When, and wherever such letters and epistles as proclaimed their privileges have been admitted through the inadvertency of modesty of them to whom they were sent, unwilling to quarrel with them about the good opinion which they had of themselves (which kind of entertainment they yet sometimes met not withall) the next successors always took for granted, and pleaded what their predecessors had presumptuously broached, as that which of right and unquestionably belonged to them. And this they made sure of, that they would never lose any ground, or take any one step backwards from what any of them had advanced to.

Wherever they heard of any difference among Bishops, they were still imposing their umpirage upon them, which commonly by the one or other of the parties at variance, to ballance thereby some disadvantages, that they had to wrestle withall, was admitted; yes sometimes they would begin to take part with them that were openly in the wrong, even Hereticks themselves, that they might thereby procure an address to them from others, which afterwards they would interpret as an express of their subjection. And wherever their umpirage was admitted, they were never wanting to improve their own interest by it, like the old Romans who being chosen to determine a controversy between other people about some lands, adjudged them to themselves.

If any person that was really injured, or pretended so to be, made any address to them for any kind of relief, immediately they laid hold of their address as an appeal to their authority, and acted in their behalf accordingly, though they were sometimes chidden for their pains, and advised to meddle with what they had to do withall.

Did any Bishops of note write them letters of respect, presently in their rescripts they return them thanks for their profession of subjection to the See Apostolick; so supposing them to do that, which in truth they did not, they promise to do for them that which they never desired, and by both made way for the enlargment of the confines of their own authority.

Where any Prince or Emperor was entangled in his affairs, they were still ready to crush them into that condition of trouble, from where they could not be delivered but by their assistance; or to make them believe that their adherence to them, was the only means to preserve them from ruine, and so procured their suffrage to their authority.

To these and the like heads of corrupt and sinful artifices may the most of the testimonies commonly pleaded for the Pope's Supremacy be referred. By such ways and means has it been erected. Yet far enough from any such prevalency for seven hundred years, as to afford us any of the experiments which you boast of.

The next thing you except against in my story, is, my affirming that Austin the Monk who came here from Rome, was a man as far as appears by story the little acquainted with the Gospel. In the repetition of which words to keep your hand in ure, you leave out that expression as far as appears by the story, which is the evidence whereunto I appeal for the truth of my assertion, and add to aggravate the matter, the word very, very little, and then add, here is the thanks that good Saint Austin has, who out of his love and kindness entred upon the wild forrest of our Paganism, with great hazards and inexpressible sufferings of hunger, cold, and other corporal inconveniencies! But in the place you except against, I acknowledge that God made him a special instrument in bringing the Scripture or Gospel among us, which I presume also he declared, according to the light and ability which he had. But you are your own mother's son; nothing will serve your turn, but absolute, most pure and perfect. For what I have further intimated of him, there are sundry things in the history of his coming here, and proceedings here that warrant the suggestion. The questions that he sent for resolution to Gregory at Rome, discover what manner of man he was. Let a man be never so partially addicted to him, and his work, he must acknowledge that their frivolousness and impertinency, considering the work he had in hand, discover somewhat besides learning and wisdom in him. So also did his driving of 10000 men, besides an innumerable company of women and children altogether into the river Swale in Yorkshire, and there causing them to baptize one another. His contest with the British Bishops about the time of the observation of Easter, breaking the peace for a circumstance of a ceremony that has cost the Church twenty times more trouble then it is worth, is of the same nature. And I desire to know from where you have your story of his inexpressible suffering here among us. All that I can find, informs us that he was right meetly entertained by King Ethelbert, at his first landing by the means of Berda his wife a Christian before his coming, with all plentifull provision for himself and his companions. The next news we hear of him, is about his Archiepiscopacy, his Pall, and his Throne, from where he would not rise to receive the poor Brittans that came to confer with him. Further of his sufferings as yet I can meet with nothing.

And these are the things which you thought yourself able to except against in my story of the progress and declension of religion. The sum of it I shall now comprize in some few assertions, which you may do well to consider, and get them disproved.

The first is, that the Gospel was preached in this Island in the days of the Apostles, by persons coming from the East, directed by the Providence of God for that purpose; most probably by Joseph of Arimathea in chief, without any respect to Rome, or mission from there.

That the doctrine preached then by them, was the same that is now publickly professed in England; and not that taught by the Church of Rome, where there is a discrepancy between us.

That the story of the coming of Fugatius and Damianus into the Province of Brittain, sent by Eleutherius to Lucius, is uncertain, improbable, and not to be reconciled to the state and condition of the affairs in these nations, at the time supposed for its accomplishment.

4. That about the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, the generality of the professors of Christian religion in the world, were wofully declined from the zeal, piety, faith, love and purity in the worship of God, which their predecessors in the same profession glorified God by; and that in particular the church was much degenerated.

5. There the Bishops of Rome for five hundred years never laid claim to that sovereign power and infallibility which they have challenged since the days of Pope Gregory the seventh.

6. That the Bishops of Rome in that space of time, pretending to some disorderly supremacy over other bishops and churches, though incomparably short of their after and present pretences, were rebuked and opposed by the best and most learned men of those days.

7. That the distraction of the provinces of the Western part of the Empire by Goths, Vandals, Hunns, Saxons, Alans, Franks, Longobards, and their associates, was no less just in the holy providence of God upon the account of the moral evils and superstitions of the professors of Christianity among them, than was that which afterwards ensued of the Eastern provinces by the Saracens and Turks.

8. That these nations having planted themselves in the provinces of the Empire, together with Christianity either received anew, or retained many Paganish customs, ceremonies, rites and opinions therewithal.

9. That their kings, by grants of privileges, donations and concessions of power, made partly out of blind zeal, partly to secure some interests of their own, exceedingly advanced the Papal power, and confirmed their formerly rejected pretensions.

10. That when they began to perceive and feel the pernicious effects and consequences of their own facility, their grants being made a ground of farther encroachments, they opposed themselves in their laws and edicts and practices against them.

11. That there was on all hands a sad declension in the Western Church, in doctrine, worship and manners continually progressive to the time of Reformation.

These are the principal assertions on which my story is built, and which it supposes. If you have a mind to get them, or any of them called to an account and examined, I shall if God will, and I live, give them their confirmation from such undoubted records as you have no just cause to except against.