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lars, they shall find it otherwise: but partly to bring the matter unto a shorter trial, partly to give the word of God his due, and to declare what that rock is, upon which alone we build our faith, even "the foundation of the apostles and prophets;" from which no slight that they can devise shall ever draw us.

The same course did St. Augustine take with the Pelagians against whom he wanted not the authority of the fathers of the Church. "Which if I would collect (saith he) and use their testimonies, it would be too long a work; and I might peradventure seem to have less confidence than I ought in the canonical authorities, from which we ought not to be withdrawn." Yet was the Pelagian heresy then but newly budded: which is the time wherein the pressing of the fathers' testimonies is thought to be best in season. With how much better warrant may we follow this precedent, having to deal with such as have had time and leisure enough to falsify the fathers' writings, and to "teach them the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans?" The method of confuting heresies, by the consent of holy fathers, is by none commended more than by Vincentius Lirinensis: who is careful notwithstanding herein to give us this caveat. "But neither always, nor all kinds of heresies are to be impugned after this manner; but such only as are new, and lately sprung: namely, when they do first arise, while by the straitness of the time itself they be hindered from falsifying the rules of the ancient faith; and before the time that, their poison spreading farther, they attempt to corrupt the writings of the ancients. But

Ephes. chap. 2. ver. 20.

Quos si colligere, et eorum testimoniis uti, velim, et nimis longum erit, et de canonicis authoritatibus, a quibus non debemus averti, minus fortasse videbor præsumpsisse quam debui. Aug. de nupt. et concupiscent. lib. 2. cap. 51.

i Sed neque semper, neque omnes hæreses hoc modo impugnandæ sunt, sed novitiæ recentesque tantummodo, cum primum scilicet exoriuntur; antequam infalsare vetustæ fidei regulas ipsius temporis vetantur angustiis; ac priusquam, manante latius veneno, majorum volumina vitiare conentur. Cæterum dilatatæ et inveteratæ hæreses nequaquam hac via aggrediendæ sunt, eo quod prolixo temporum tractu longa his furandæ veritatis patuerit occasio. Vincent. de hæres. cap. 39.

far spread and inveterate heresies are not to be dealt withal this way, forasmuch as, by long continuance of time, a long occasion hath, lain open unto them to steal away the truth." The heresies with which we have to deal have spread so far, and continued so long, that the defenders of them are bold to make universality and duration the special marks of their Church: they had opportunity enough of time and place, to put in use all deceivableness of unrighteousness; neither will they have it to say that, in coining and clipping and washing the monuments of antiquity, they have been wanting to themselves.

Before the council of Nice, as hath been observed by one*, who sometime was pope himself, little respect, to speak of, was had to the Church of Rome. If this may be thought to prejudice the dignity of that Church, which would be held to have sat as queen among the nations, from the very beginning of Christianity: you shall have a crafty merchant, Isidorus Mercator, I trow, they call him, that will help the matter, by counterfeiting decretal epistles in the name of the primitive bishops of Rome; and bringing in thirty of them in a row, as so many knights of the post, to bear witness of that great authority, which the Church of Rome enjoyed before the Nicene fathers were assembled. If the Nicene fathers have not amplified the bounds of her jurisdiction, in so large a manner as she desired, she hath had her well-willers, that have supplied the council's negligence in that behalf, and made canons for the purpose in the name of the good fathers, that never dreamed of such a business. If the power of judging all others will not content the pope, unless he himself may be exempted from being judged by any other: another council', as ancient at least as that of Nice, shall be suborned; wherein it shall be concluded, by the consent of two hundred and eightyfour imaginary bishops, that no man may judge the first seat and for failing, in an elder council" than that, consisting of three hundred buckram bishops of the very self

Eneas Sylvius, epist. 288.

Concil. Rom. sub Sylvest. cap. 20. Nemo enim judicabit primam sedem. ma Concil. Sinuessan. circa fin.

same making, the like note shall be sung: "Quoniam prima sedes non judicabitur a quoquam; the first seat must not be judged by any man." Lastly, if the pope does not think that the fulness of spiritual power is sufficient for his greatness, unless he may be also lord paramount in temporalibus; he hath his followers ready at hand, to frame a fair donation, in the name of Constantine the emperor, whereby his holiness shall be estated, not only in the city of Rome, but also in the seigniory of the whole west. It would require a volume to rehearse the names of those several tractates, which have been basely bred in the former days of darkness, and fathered upon the ancient doctors of the church, who, if they were now alive, would be deposed that they were never privy to their begetting.

Neither hath this corrupting humour stayed itself in forging of whole councils, and entire treatises of the ancient writers; but hath, like a canker, fretted away divers of their sound parts, and so altered their complexions, that they appear not to be the same men they were. To instance, in the great question of Transubstantiation: we were wont to read in the books attributed unto S. Ambrose," "Si ergo tanta vis est in sermone Domini Jesu, ut inciperent esse quæ non erant: quanto magis operatorius est, ut sint quæ erant, et in aliud commutentur? if therefore there be so great force in the speech of our Lord Jesus, that the things which were not begun to be, (namely, at the first creation): how much more is the same powerful to make, that things may still be that which they were, and yet be changed into another thing?" It is not unknown how much those words, ut sint quæ erant, have troubled their brains who maintain that, after the words of consecration, the elements of bread and wine be not that thing which they were: and what devices they have found to make the bread and wine in the sacrament to be like unto the beast in the Revelation, "that" was, and is not, and yet is." But that Gordian knot, which they with their skill could not so readily untie, their masters at Rome, Alexander

De sacramentis, lib. 4. cap. 4.

Apoc. chap. 17. ver. 8.

like, have now cut asunder; paring clean away in their Roman edition (which is also followed in that set out at Paris, anno 1603) those words, that so much troubled them; and letting the rest run smoothly after this manner: "Quanto magis operatorius est, ut quæ erant, in aliud commutentur? how much more is the speech of our Lord powerful to make, that those things which were should be changed into another thing?"

The author of the imperfect work upon Matthew, homily the eleventh, writeth thus: "Si ergo hæc vasa sanctificata ad privatos usus transferre sic periculosum est, in quibus non est verum corpus Christi, sed mysterium corporis ejus continetur; quanto magis vasa corporis nostri, quæ sibi Deus ad habitaculum præparavit, non debemus locum dare diabolo agendi in eis quod vult? if therefore it be so dangerous a matter to transfer unto private uses those holy vessels, in which the true body of Christ is not, but the mystery of his body is contained; how much more for the vessels of our body, which God hath prepared for himself to dwell in, ought not we to give way unto the devil, to do in them what he pleaseth?" Those words, "in quibus non est verum corpus Christi, sed mysterium corporis ejus continetur; in which the true body of Christ is not, but the mystery of his body is contained;" did threaten to cut the very throat of the papists' real presence; and therefore, in good policy, they thought it fit to cut their throat first, for doing any further hurt. Whereupon, in the editions of this work printed at Antwerp, apud Joannem Steelsium, anno 1537. at Paris, apud Joannem Roigny, anno 1543. and at Paris again, apud Audoenum Parvum, anno 1557. not one syllable of them is to be seen; though extant in the ancienter editions, one whereof is as old as the year 1487. And to the same purpose, in the nineteenth homily, instead of "sacrificium panis et vini, the sacrifice of bread and wine," which we find in the old impressions, these latter editions have chopt in "sacrificium corporis et sanguinis Christi, the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ."

In the year 1608 there were published at Paris certain

works of Fulbertus bishop of Chartres, "pertaining as well to the refuting of the heresies of this time (for so saith the inscription), as to the clearing of the history of the French." Among those things that appertain to the confutation of the heresies of this time, there is one especially, folio 168. laid down in these words: "Nisi manducaveritis, inquit, carnem filii hominis, et sanguinem biberitis, non habebitis vitam in vobis. Facinus vel flagitium videtur jubere. Figura ergo est, dicet hæreticus, præcipiens passioni Domini esse communicandum tantum, et suaviter atque utiliter recondendum in memoria, quod pro nobis caro ejus crucifixa et vulnerata sit: unless (saith Christ) ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye shall not have life in you. He seemeth to command an outrage or wickedness. It is therefore a figure, will the heretic say, requiring us only to communicate with the Lord's passion, and sweetly and profitably to lay up in our memory that his flesh was crucified and wounded for us." He that put in those words "dicet hæreticus" thought he had notably met with the heretics of this time: but was not aware, that thereby he made St. Augustine an heretic for company. For the heretic, that speaketh thus, is even St. Augustine himself: whose very words these are, in his third book de doctrina Christiana, the sixteenth chapter. Which some belike having put the publisher in mind of, he was glad to put this among his errata, and to confess that these two words were not to be found in the manuscript copy which he had from Petavius; but telleth us not what we are to think of him, that, for the countenancing of the popish cause, ventured so shamefully to abuse St. Augustine.

In the year 1616. a tome of ancient writers, that never saw the light before, was set forth at Ingoldstad by Petrus Steuartius: where, among other tractates, a certain Penitential, written by Rabanus that famous archbishop of Mentz, is to be seen. In the thirty-third chapter of

P Quæ tam ad refutandas hæreses hujus temporis, quam ad Gallorum hist. pertinent.

Vide tom. 11. bibliothecæ patrum, edit. Col. pag. 44. b.

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