we say, Fain would M. Harding have his reader to believe that Ibid. we utterly despise all holy Fathers; but we despise them not, M. Harding, as may partly appear by what we have already said. We read their works, we reverence them, we give God thanks for them; we call them the pillars, the lights, the Fathers of GOD's Church, we despise them This thing only we say: were their learning and holiness never so great, yet be they not equal in credit with the Scriptures of GOD.-Ibid. div. 3. not. ment of the primitive Fathers to We never despised the judgment of the learned and holy The judg Fathers, but rather take them and embrace them as the witnesses of GOD's truth. And herein we find you the more be followed. blameworthy, M. Harding, for that, having without cause renounced the judgment and orders of the primitive Church The judgment of the primitive Fathers to and ancient Fathers, as to the wise and learned it may apear, yet evermore ye make vaunt of your antiquity, and fray the world with a vizard of the Church, and a show of old Fathers, as if a poor summoner, that had lost his commission, would serve citations by the virtue of his empty box. And thus have ye set all your vain phantasies in place of God's Church, and your Church in place of GOD.-Ibid. Part VI. c. i. div. 2. These be cases, not of wit, but of faith; not of eloquence, but of truth; not invented or devised by us, but from the be followed. Apostles, and holy Fathers, and founders of the Church, by long succession brought unto us. We are not the devisers thereof, but only the keepers; not the masters, but the scholars. ... Touching the substance of religion, we believe that the ancient, Catholic, learned Fathers believed; we do that they did, we say that they said. And marvel not, in what side soever ye see them, if you see us join unto the same. It is our great comfort, that we see their faith and our faith to agree in one.-Reply.—Answer to M. Harding's conclusion, ad fin. The antieatholicity of Ro manism. Well, then, let them at least show this their boasted antiquity; let them make it appear, that what they so much extol, is indeed of so vast an extent; let them prove, that all Christian nations have embraced their religion. But, alas! (as I said before,) they flee from their own decrees, and have already plucked up those Canons, which, but a very few years since, they made to last for ever. Why, then, should we trust them in relation to what they pretend concerning the Fathers, the ancient Councils, and the Scriptures? They have not, O good GOD! they have not on their sides what they pretend to have; they have neither antiquity, universality, nor consent, of either all times or all nations; and of this they are not ignorant themselves, though they craftily dissemble their knowledge; yea, at times, they will not obscurely confess it, and therefore sometimes they will allege, that the sanctions of the ancient Councils and Fathers are such as may lawfully be changed; "for different decrees (say they) will best suit the different state of the Church in different times." And so they hide themselves under the name of the Church, and by a wretched sham, delude mankind.-Apology, c. v. § 8. can Church was reformed after tive model. We (the Anglican Church) have done nothing in the The Anglichanging of religion, either insolently or rashly; nothing but with great deliberation and slowly; nor had we ever the primithought of doing it, except the will of God undoubtedly and manifestly opened to us in the most sacred Scriptures, and the necessity of our salvation, had compelled us so to do; for although we have departed from that Church, which they call the Catholic Church, and thereupon they have kindled a great envy against us, in them who cannot well judge of us; yet it is enough for us, and ought to be so to any prudent and pious man, who considers seriously of his salvation, that we have only departed from that Church which may err, which CHRIST, who cannot err, so long since foretold should err, and which we see clearly with our eyes has departed from the holy Fathers, the Apostles, CHRIST Himself, and the primitive and Catholic Church. And we have approached, as much as possibly we could, the Church of the Apostles, and ancient Catholic Bishops and Fathers, which we know was yet a perfect, and, as Tertullian saith, an unspotted virgin, and not contaminated with any idolatry or great and public error. Neither have we only reformed the doctrine of our Church, and made it like theirs in all things, but we have also brought the celebration of the sacraments, and the forms of our public rites and prayers, to an exact resemblance to their institutions and customs. And so we have only done that which we know CHRIST Himself and all pious and godly men have in all ages ever done; for we have brought back Religion, which was foully neglected and depraved by them, to her original and first state; for we considered that the reformation of religion was to be made by that which was the first pattern of it; for this rule will ever hold good against all heretics, saith the most ancient Father Tertullian, That that is true which is first, and that is adulterated and corrupted which is later. Irenæus doth often appeal to the to the most ancient Churches who are nearest to CHRIST, and which therefore were not at all likely to have erred. And why is not that course now taken also? Why do we not return to a conformity with the most ancient churches? Why cannot that be now heard among us, which was pronounced in the Council of Nice, without the least contradiction or opposition from so many Bishops and Catholic Fathers; ἔθη ἀρχαῖα κρατείτω, Let the old customs stand firm?-Apology, c. vi. § 15. A challenge If any learned man of all our adversaries, or if all the Romanists. learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one suffi cient sentence out of any old Catholic Doctor or Father: or out of any old General Council: or out of the holy Scriptures of GOD: or any one example of the primitive Church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved, that there was any private mass in the whole world at that time, for the space of six hundred years after CHRIST: or that there was any communion ministered unto the people under one kind: or that the people had their common prayers then in a strange tongue that they understood not: or that the Bishop of Rome was then called an universal Bishop, or the head of the Universal Church: or that the people was then taught to believe that CHRIST's body is really [i.e. carnally,] substantially, corporally, carnally or naturally in the Sacrament: or that His body is or may be in a thousand places or more at one time: or that the priest did then hold up the Sacrament over his head: or that the people did then fall down and worship it with godly honour: or that the Sacrament was then, or now ought to be, hanged up under a canopy: or that in the Sacrament, after the words of consecration there remaineth only the accidents of and shews, without the substance of bread and wine: or that the priest then divided the Sacrament in three parts, and afterward received himself all alone: or that whosoever had said the Sacrament is a figure, a pledge, a token, or a remembrance of CHRIST'S body, had therefore been judged for an heretic or that it was lawful then to have thirty, twenty, fifteen, ten or five masses said in the church, in one day or that images were then set up in the churches, to the intent the people might worship them: or that the lay-people was then forbidden to read the word of God in their own tongue. If any man alive were able to prove any of these articles, by any one clear or plain clause, or sentence, either of the Scriptures; or of the old Doctors; or of any old General Council; or by any example of the primitive Church: I promised then that I would give over and subscribe unto him. These words are the very like I remember I spake here openly before you all. And these be the things that some men say I have spoken and cannot justify. But I, for my part, will not only not call in any thing that I then said (being well assured of the truth therein), but also will lay more matter to the same. That if they that seek occasion, have any thing to the contrary, they may have the larger scope to reply against me. Wherefore, beside all that I have said already, I will say further, and yet nothing so much as might be said. If any one of all our adversaries be able dearly and plainly to prove by such authority of the Scriptures, the old Doctors, and Councils, as I said before, that it was then lawful for the priest to pronounce the words of consecration closely and in silence to himself: or that the priest had then authority to offer up CHRIST unto His Father: or, to communicate and receive the Sacrament for another, as they do: or to apply the virtue of CHRIST's death and passion to any man by the mean of the Mass or that it was then thought a sound doctrine to Bishop Jewel does not here deny the Catholic doctrine of a Commemorative Sacrifice in the Eucharist, for in his Reply to Harding, Lond. 1609, p. 424, he cites Chrysostom, in Epist. ad Hebræos Homil. xvii. who says, "We offer indeed, but in remembrance of His death. This sacrifice is an example of that sacrifice. This that we do, is done in remembrance of that that was done. We offer up the same that CHRIST offered, or rather, we work the remembrance of that sacrifice:" and then Jewel adds, "Thus we offer up CHRIST, that is to say, an example, a commemoration, a remembrance of the death of CHRIST. This kind of sacrifice was never denied." Herein the Bishop agrees with Cranmer, Andrews, Laud, Bramhall, Taylor, Mede, Mason, and our other elder Divines, and every ancient liturgy extant-when shall the prayer of oblation be restored to our own service! |