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Royal Martyr? How then came this to be Sanctify'd into a Lawful and Laudable Act of Loyalty, and Publick Piety, and Neceffary Self-Defence? If Circumstances do not alter Cafes as to their Lawfulness, or Unlawfulness, how can these things be reconcil'd? But I fhall let these your little Deliria pafs, in hope of a more fober Reafoning in your next and more Material Enquiry. Which is this, III. Whether the Pafiors we have Page 62. chofen, have a Lawful Call to the Miniftry? And I am glad that we are at length come to the Main Point, on which the whole Controversy turns. Wherefore laying afide your little Reflections on this Occafion, we'll confider,

1. How you have deliver'd the Foreign Proteftant Churches, which I thought muft, by your general Cenfure, have fallen into the fame Condemnation with us. But it seems you have fome Mercy for them, tho? you have but little for us; but 'tis well they are Foreigners to you, and a little out of your reach, or else they must have far'd as we do, as fome of the poor Refugees, that have adhered to their Principles, have tafted. The way you have to bring them off,is by an Extraordinary Call, which you are contented to grant them to the Page 66. Paftoral Office; but whether you are in Earneft, or in Jeft, is uncertain. For you declare, that you do not here difpute, whether the Foreign Minifters, who were without Epifcopal Government, had a just Title to the Paftoral Office; but all the Question (as far as you care to be concern'd in it) is concerning their own Sentiments of the manner of their Advancement to it; and fo by standing Neuter, and leaving them to defend themselves as well as they can, you cunningly think to keep your felf pretty fafe, as you fay, from the Horns of my Dilemma. But I fuppofe you will find it neceffary to declare for one fide, or the other,

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or you will not be fo pretty fafe as you think your felf. But First, we will examine what the Defence is that you say they make for Themselves; and whether you have made a true Report of their Sentiments.

Now you fay there are but Two ways in the Church of advancing Perfons to the Sacred Function. The one is by Succeffion to thofe that were poffeffed of it before, which is continued by Ordination, and Laying on of the Hands of fuch Paftors, who were invested with Authoity to that purpose; And this bath been the Ordinary

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way in all the Churches upon the face of the Earth. The other way is by an Extraordinary Call, which was immediately from God Himself, without the Ordinary Ministry of Man. And on This the Reformers of whom we have been fpeaking, you say, founded their Title to the Paftoral Office. For this you cite Beza, in whofe Judgment, you tell us, that thofe Blessed Servants. had an Extraordinary Call; and that this Call was a Divine Afflatus, which did conftitute them Paftors, without any Ordination by Paftoral Hands; On which account (that you may fo rid your own hands of them, and fave your felf from the Horns of my Dilemma) you are content to advance them into that high Degree of Apoftles, Prophets and Evangelifts. Now, Sir, here you must expect to meet with another of these Horned Arguments; and in this Form. Either you do indeed believe that they had this Extraordinary Immediate Call and Commiffion from Heaven, whereby they were truly made Apostles, Prophets and Evangelifts, and thereby Authoriz'd to introduce a New way to the Ministry; or you do not believe it. One or the other of thefe Two contradictory Propofitions must be true; Either you do believe it, or you do not, Vtram borum.

1. If you do indeed believe it, that is, in the Senfe, wherein you pretend to understand their Sentiments

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Sentiment of their Extraordinary and Immediate Call and Commiffion from Heaven, then

1. I hope you will for ever hereafter maintain a due Reverence for this later fort of Apostles, and for their Way; and that the Apostle Calvin, and his Apoftolical Churches of Geneva, &c. will now be deliver❜d from all the Contempt that hath been caft upon them.

2. If thefe Men had now, on the Reformation of the Churches from the Degeneracy of that of Rome, an Apoftolical Commiflion from Heaven for their Presbyterial Way and Conftitution, then they are the Epifcopal Churches only,that are the Diffenters and the Schifmaticks, in not Conforming to the New Apoftolical Inftitutions; For if you grant them an Apostleship by an immediate Commiffion from Heayen, you must alfo grant them a Catholick Jurifdiction and Power over all the Chriftian Churches in the World, unless you can very fubftantially prove that their Divine Commiffion, was by their Patent limitted to Themfelves, or to fuch or fuch particular parts of the Church, and what the Churches were that were excepted.

3. If Heaven thus conftituted thefe Men Apoftles, on the account of the Reformation, and by the Call to come out of Babylon, why were not the Scotch Reformers, and the English too, as much Apoftles as they of Germany, Holland or France, being equally concern'd both in the Reformation, and in the Call of it? And fo doubtless they were, only with this difference, Thofe of the Presbyterial Way were as Paul and Barnabas, and the rest of the Apoftles and Evangelifts of the Gentiles; and thofe of the Epifcopal Way were as the Apoftles of the Circumcifion, that in compliance with the People, and the Church out of which they iffued, kept up the Superftitious Rites and Ceremonies which fhould have been laid afide. Now Sir, either you do in truth believe all this, or elfe 2. You

2. You do not believe it. And if fo, then have you dealt very unfincerely with them, and inftead of Defending, or Excufing, you have but Mock'd them, which is a little more unchriftian and ungenteel, than to have left them to their own defence, and never have pretended to have advocated a Caufe which in heart you condemn. And fo you had been as good you had yielded filently to the Horn of my first Dilemma, as to be caught again upon this. For either you have juftified the Calvinifts by a Divine Call and Apoftolical Commiffion; and what then will become of your own Church, let the plain and neceffary confequence fay; or elfe, as I told you in my former Letter, you throw us altogether into the fame Pit of Condemnation for Schifmaticks.

But now that I may, if poffible, fet you a little 1 righter, as to their own true Sentiments of the Extraordinary Call they pretend to, and that Afflatus by which they were acted in it, I muft of neceffity produce their own Interpretations, unless you will pretend to know their Minds better than themfelves.

As for Monfieur Turretin, whom I quoted in my first Letter to you, it feems he is a Man (compar'd with you) whofe Senfe doth not fignifie very much, tho' by all the reft of the Proteftant Learned World, he be defervedly valued for a Perfon of General Learning, and of extraordinary clearness and Acumen in Controverfial Divinity: And he feems truly to have ftated what was Beza's Senfe of the Extraordinary Call, when he fays, Datur vocatio quædam, &c. There is a Call, which tho' it be Ordinary in reSpect of the Function it felf, and of the "Election and Ordination to it, which may be done by Men according to 'the received Order; yet may be faid to be Extraordinary in refpect of the ex-imious, and fingular Gifts wherewith thofe that are call'd to the "Office

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Turret. Theol.
Elench.Vol.3.
P. 242.

66

Office are extraordinarily endued, and in respect of "the wonderful Succefs and extraordinary Effects perform'd by them; and this was the Call of our First 62 Reformers. So that the Extraordinarinefs of their Call, imply'd no new way of Acceffion to the Office, but that Spirit of Wisdom, Faith, Patience, Zeal and Self-denial, wherewith they were Divinely and Extraordinarily influenced in their Reformation, as I told you in my Letter, p. 36. So Voet in his Vindication of the Reformers, as to their Call, against Janfenius the Papift, who makes much the fame Objection against the Reformers, as you do against us, To whom he thus replies, "Confundis perpetuo ufum, "feu Exercitium Minifterii cum Vocatione ad Mini(6 fterium. You always confound their Exercife of the LL Miniftry with their Call to it. Their Call to the

Voet. Defp.
Cauf. Papal.
P. 307.

Office was the Ordinary Call, but their Call to the Exercife, in fome refpects, Extraordinary. And that Beza's Senfe of their Extraordinary Call was no other, is confequentially plain, because he always held the Ordination by Presbyters to be valid, and the Ordinary Scripture way to the Office,and pleads against Saravia, that the Bishop and the Presbyter is the fame Office. But is it Beza's Senfe, as you reprefent it, that this Extraordinary Afflatus only takes place where the Ordinary Call is not to be had, Ubi nullus eft Legitime Vocationis ufus? What can he here mean by the Legitima Vocatio, which he opposes to his Afflatus? Is it not either that Ordinary way of Calling to the Ministry, which had been used and legitimated by the Laws of the Church of Rome, from which they were now call'd to depart, and not that way which this Afflatus directed them to, unless you can fuppofe him to illegitimate their own Fundamental Rule of their Reformation? Or else rather the Legitima Vocatio, is that Call which is agreeable to the Law and Rule of the Holy Scriptures

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