THE Pernicious Consequences OF THE New Heresy of the Jesuits AGAINST The KING and the STATE By an Advocate of Parliament LONDON Printed by I. Flesher for Richard Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred MAJESTY 1666. THE Dedicatory Preface My LORD THE title your Honour has these ensuing Papers and to the Person who makes them English defends him from being thought presumptuous that now they are published and come abroad in the World They wear this cipher in front as a Periapta or Amulet to protect him from all malevolent Influenences And he had need have a sevenfold Buckler that has to do with an Host against whose assaults and stratagems even Kings themselves are not safe from danger The Pens and Tongues of their sworn Adversaries have sharpened the Swords and Poniards Ovid interest an Ferro an Veneno perimas Mariana l. 1. c. 7. to say nothing of the Knives the Poison and the Gunpowder which have so often been prepared for their destruction Much of this is indeed stiffly denied but is 't not then a wonder if the Villainies are so detested there should be found so few of the Party who renounce it in their Writings I speak not here of the Jesuits alone but as our Author has well observed of their other Churchmen too who would certainly more decry it were there not some other Mystery in it which we understand not and they artificially conceal when one poor Widdrington and some few others till of late the Jansenists have been charged with no less Crime than Heresy for disowning their pernicious Doctrines Nay it has gained that Ascendent in France a Country where these Holy Fathers have stood so long on their good behaviour that they have even dared to justify the Excommunication of one of their Kings in the King 's own Printing-house at his own Palace proper cost and charges and under his very nose prevailing with his facility by an unbeard-of and unparallelled insolence not to mention here Coriolanus' Abridgement See the Life of P. Boniface in Binnius' Collect of Councils so destructive to the Gallican Liberty and other their late practices sufficiently detected and perstringed by the Author of this ingenuous Piece Methinks it were impossible that Princes who either loved their People or the glory of the Crown should truckle under such Impostors to gratify a sort of fanatics thirsting after their blood and ruin to subject it to a foreign and unreasonable pretence by the wild and novel interpretation of I know not what Infallibility which even those of their own Party deride them for who have but a grain of Sobriety But what may not they pretend to who can create new Symbols and Articles of Faith with an unerring Faculty as well as Confidence which can make men believe 't is for the Interest of Religion how flagitious soever their designs and practices are 'T is but calling for the Chair and his Holiness dubbs himself Infallible and that sufficiently to consecrate the most nefarious and prodigious of Doctrines and I doubt not but when the Devil himself tempts men to the most detestable Treasons he gilds it also with this Religious Bait. We have had ample testimony of this even in Those who amongst ourselves had sucked in the Principles of that Roman Wolf and which puts me in mind of what that Hypocrite Rouse a Partisan of the late Rebellion and long Parliament replied to a seduced but worthy Person when near the Catastrophe of our Liberties he was one day pressed with an evident conviction by what unjust ways they had pursued the Destruction of that Glorious and Excellent PRINCE who fell into their Snares That indeed he could not altogether excuse the procedure but this he knew there lay Honesty in the bottom of it Papa post mutare Regna Bellarm. de Pontif. Ro. l. 5. c. 6. & uni auferre atque alteri confer tanquam summus Princeps Spiritualis si id sit necessarium ad animarum salutem say the Roman Champions And would not one swear the men were Confederates and understood one another whose actions and replies are so near of kindred Santarel the Jesuit gives for one of the Reasons why the Pope might depose Kings Because their Persons were burdensome to the State Compare this with the very expression and words of our late Republicarians And again That they have their Authority not from God but the Civil Law only and ex arbitrio Populi Adversus Edicta Reg. p. 145. as Creswell words it Nay that Kings may be deposed by their Subjects for sundry Causes a Nolumus hunc regnare is sufficient The whole Council of Trent freed Subjects from their Obedience Cap. 7. sect 14. So did the Rump-Parliament What an harmony of Confessions is bear I 'll be bold to affirm there were never any two Doctrines more conformable then that of the Fathers as they will be called forsooth and that of these novelists who have so improved the Zeal of their Predecessors as if the Aphorisms of Emanuel Sà Bellarmine and Mariana were not the suggestion of a Diabolical but the Dictates of the sacred Spirit And who of either Sect can have the forehead to deny this that shall but look into their Writings or Practices and the solemnity of their several Approbators and Apologists A man needs but to turn over the Persecution of Monsieur Arnald to find how these poor men are treated that but offer at the vindication of the Sovereignty of Kings I appeal to the horrid Murder committed on those Sacred Heads by Clement Chastel Ravillac etc. if after those crimson Tragedies they had not each of them more than one Compurgator The Mariana's Veruna's Guignard's in our Milton's our Goodwin's and our Ascham's another spawn of these holy Cleremontanians The thunder of Paul the IIIᵈ against Henry the VIIIth even before his more signal Defection and that he but at first scrupled the Supremacy may be paralleled with their branding our most Religious of Kings as inclining to Popery who died to defend the most Orthodox Faith in the World The Bull of Pius Quintus against Queen Elizabeth is notorious as well as the Catastrophe of those who plotted against her Royal Successor by the instigation of Clement the VIIIth and what hand they may have had in fomenting our late Disorders both in Church and State from 37 to 60 let the World judge when they seriously reflect upon what Principles the Brethren proceeded and what were the Consequences since nothing save Hell and Rome could have inspired so horrid a Rebellion But to number the Heads and Authors of this holy Fraud begun by Mahomet Phocas and Boniface the IIIᵈ almost Contemporaries to show that Turcism Universality and King-killing are of an Age we may hear it justified as well as practised out of their own Mouths and Writings after a Thousand years that all the World had condemned it not as a Probable but Infallible Doctrine if but the Catalogue of their Citations would consist with the limits of a Preface since our Author might have filled another Volume with their Names and Numbers only Alvarez Ariana Augustine Triumphus Azoride Baronius Becanus Bellarmine Bonarsius Bozius Campianus Capistranus Carrerius Catena Chirlandus Creswell Doleman Duval Eudaemon Fevardentius Gabulius Garnet Greg. of Valentia Gretser Guignard Kellerus Lessius Molina Pacensis Parsons Pelagius Richeome Ribadeneira Rosseus Sà Sadlerus Santarel Scribanius Stapleton Symancha Tesmond Veruna Wendeckius Zodoricus and thousands more who have dipped their Pens in the blood of Kings with a Praeclarè cum rebus humanis ageretur Mariana de Rege l. 1. c. 6. si multi etc. as one of these Gallants does not blush to say publicly and in print In Concert Eccles. Catholic Anno 1583. Treveris excusâ p. 22. Velim sciatis says Campian quod ad Societatem nostram attinet omnes nos qui per totum orbem longè latéque diffusi sumus quorum est continua successio & magnus numerus sanctum foedus iniisse neque quamdiu vel unus nostrûm supererit studium & consilia nostra de salute vestra meaning the Subversion of the Government and the Religion professed in it intermissuros Jampridem inita ratio est & inchoatum certamen nulla vis nullus Anglorum impetus superabit and 't is bravely resolved Nor are these all of one but of several Nations also to show that 't is not the Vote of private Doctors only In Philopat 106. See also Bellarm. cont. Barcl to prove the Doctrine Catholic as Creswell would bear us down but of their whole College Divines and Lawyers too Et certum est & de Fide That if any Christian Prince deflexerit shall but warp a little he is immediately deposeable & possunt & debent eum arcere like another Nabuchadnezzar ex hominum Christianorum dominatu Platina in vita Greg. 7. p. 67. and who shall say nay Nos nos Imperia Regna Principatus & quicquid habere Mortales possunt auferre & dare posse I could not forbear a smile at the pretty Interpretation which Father Creswel gives to a place of Scripture upon this Deflexerit which we mentioned Such a Prince says he does ipso facto forfeit his right of Government according to that of the Apostle 1 Cor. 7.15 Si Infidelis discedit etc. If the Unbelieving depart let him depart A Brother or a Sister suppose a Subject He or She is not under bondage in such cases But all this is no news My Lord to those who shall observe how happily they apply that Concession to S. Peter to invade the unclean Beasts Act. 10.13 whenever his holiness's stomach serves him Occîde & manduca 1 Cor. 15.25 Christ must reign till he have put all his Enemies under his feet That is as one infers till the Pope have served all Heretical Kings as Barbarossa was To which we add that of Jer. 1.10 See I have constituted thee over the Nations and over Kingdoms to root out and to pull down to destroy and to throw down to build and to plant for so they interpret that passage of the Prophet as our Author observes And what of all this We must know that the Pope has a faculty beyond any Prophet or Apostle of them all Carolus Rufinus Consil. 109. ● 1. as Antonius Maria blushes not to affirm and Hosius once for all Unless the sense of Scripture says he be expounded juxta sensum Ecclesiae Romanae according to the sense of the Roman Church 't is not the express word of God but the express word of the Devil My hand trembles to proceed to the rest and it was high time My Lord for the Gallican Church as it is for us to lay their hand to the Buckler and to look after these Monsters who have felt the effects of these bold and perverse spirits from their Childeric to their darling Henry his majesty 's renowned Grandfather Henry II. not to mention that Henry of our own It would fill an Iliad but to repeat the sad consequences of this exauctorating Doctrine since Gregory the VIIth degraded that Proto-Martyr-Emperor as we may style him to this Idol the Pope Henry IU. And what befell our John of England whose Crown was given away to Philip Augustus K. of France and received again on condition of a sordid Vassalage Nor did Innocentius the IVth pretend less to the Emp. Frederic the IIᵈ Bonifacius the VIIIth on King Philip the Fair Julius the IIᵈ who deposed John of Navarr Sixtus V tus Henry the IIIᵈ as a forerunner of the Knife Who can with patience read the insolent treatment of Celestine the III ● crowning an Emperor with one foot and spurning it off with the other And where the neck of a Frederic was proudly trod on we have beheld the very Marble and Inscription justified by that perverted Scripture In Mark 's Church at Venice Psal. 91.13 Super Leonem & Aspidem to show their contempt of Kings Dr. Parry was encouraged to murder Q. Elizabeth from his Holiness by an express Letter of the Cardinal of Como's extolling the design and Perron has celebrated the like pretences to palliate the Odium or at best leaves it problematical when after all that the Third Estate had declared in abhorrence of it and the Parricide committed on the person of the French Henry he tells us the Doctrine which renders Kings indeposable is a Doctrine which opens a gap to no less than Schism and Heresy and is wholly unnecessary advising his Auditors to submit to the Judgement of the Pope as the only Moderator in the Case and what that is we have in part declared Woe be to that Prince whom our Holy Father resigns to Chastisement propter Haeresin or that the Eruditi & Graves pronounce for a Tyrant and burdensome to the State as Pope Bradshaw and his Assessors not long since with us Would one think the action of Jehoiada upon Athaliah should be suborned to justify a Popish Regicide But 't was done zelo matris Ecclesiae De Inst. Sacerd. c. 13. says Tolet. I omit to speak of the Decrees of the Council of Constance against this accursed Doctrine so worthily vindicated by our illustrious Author and of the Practice as well as Precept of our Blessed Lord himself the Apostles Primitive Fathers and the Ages they lived in because they are written with the beams of the Sun In Apol. c. 37 Vestra omnia implevimus etc. And if Tertullian had not long since assured us they wanted neither Strength nor Numbers the duty of our Obedience had been sufficiently described to teach us subjection to our Princes good or bad till our modern * Cunradus Brunus de Haeret. l. 3. c. ult. n. 13. Fathers did open the eyes of the superstitious World forsooth and obtained a Brief of his Holiness by which subjects were dispensed withal ut servirent tempori or until as our Countryman explains it Creswel add Edict Regi Ang. p. 151. & sect 2. n. 160 etc. they should have vires idoneas sufficient force which * De Princip l 1. c. 26. p. 178. Ribadeneira styles Christian Prudence For then Omnium Catholicorum sententia 'T is universally agreed upon that Subjects are not only to rebel against Heretical Princes but are by divine precept & conscientiae vinculo arctissimo and under pain of damnation obliged to it That which I would evince is the peril Kings are in who stop their ears to the Trumpets which are daily sounded to alarm them against a sort of Sycophants and Roman Pensionaries who swarm in their Courts and Kingdoms watching only for this bloody signal Let our own incomparable PRINCE but consider how often his Dominions have been claimed as Feudataries to the holy See and how difficult it would be to wrest it out of these Harpies talons had they power equal to their will or to the Right they have so insolently forged Vide Fr. Bozium Eugub de Temp. Eccles. Monar l. 2. c. 1. p. 264 265 etc. Bell. Apol. advers Reg. Ang. cap. 3. The King of England says Bellarmine is a Vassal to the Bishop of Rome ratione directi dominii What can be more directly said to prove what I assert Nay and as a learned Prelate of ours well observes Masconius transfers the Title of Fidei Defensor to the Pope also though 't is well known our Princes have a right of more antiquity to it then any Pope's donation Vide English statutes 24 H. 8. c. 12. and the very first words of Magna Charta and that jure Coronae as were easy to evince though we admitted Leo the Xth to have prophesied that year John 11.52 as his brother Caiaphas had done before him But this is fortified say they by the authority of the Canonists Decretals and what is yet more formidable than all this by the subjects and properties of a new Obediential Vow of an whole Order of King-killers Let us produce a specimen or two to show with what Secrecy and Religion they proceed The Jesuit Binet told Casaubon at Paris that 't were better all the Kings in Christendom were killed then that a Confession should be revealed in which the life of a Prince might be concerned and Emanuel Sà that the Confessor potest jurare se nihil scire may swear and lie too whatever he heard rather than detect the Villainy of such a Traitor Eodémque modo potest penitus jurare se nihil tale dixisse etc. And upon this it is that Bellarmine celebrates our Garnet for his laudable Obstinacy though the less-perverted Monks of the other Orders have made no scruple to reveal the Treason and prosecute the Traitors to the Gallows I tremble almost to repeat the Instance but 't is his majesty 's Grandfather of Glorious Memory who affirms it of them That there was not long since a French Jesuit so impudent as to assert That if our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ himself were now conversant on Earth passable and obnoxious to death should any man confess to him that he designed to murder him he would suffer Jesus Christ to be killed rather than reveal the Confession To this Perron's Reply is so impertinent and superficial as one would even blush to see how he shuffles it over The Confessor says he needs not reveal the manner of his Treason 't is enough he give the King warning to take heed of himself So 't is reported did the Augurs to the great Caesar but it prevented not one Stab of the two and thirty nor did their Garnet so much as this nor any one of those reverend Fathers that ever I could learn But let us have a taste of their Politics Caeso Rege ingens sibi nomen fecit says one of Henry the Third's Murderer and Emanuel Sà In Verbo Clericus Clerici Rebellio in Regem non est crimen laesae majestatis quia non est Subditus regi The Rebellion of a Churchman against his Prince is no such thing as Treason for he is none of his Subjects An excellent argument to make Kings in love with Jesuits But this is not all Summus Pontifex says Bellarmine Clericos exemit à subjectione Principum plainly Non sunt ampliùs Reges Clericorum superiores Kings are no more their superiors so that upon the matter how many Priests and Jesuits in a State so many Kings and Emperors Who art thou speaking to Princes that judgest another man's servant Baronius in Paraenesi ad Venetos pag. 47. Domino suo stat aut cadit says the Cardinal And Santarel goes farther yet Tractat. de haeres Papa sine Concilio the Pope does in spite of a Council depose an Emperor quia Papa & Christi unum est tribunal they are Colleagues in Office but which is more than Bozius it seems allows who speaking in the person of Pope's alone de Temp. Eccles. Monarch l. 1. c. 3.11 says Per me Reges By me Kings reing he may remove them yea and mulct them too with death not for Heresy only but if they so much as favour it I cannot affirm that all our Roman Catholics are of this Belief but then I can hardly call them Roman Catholics indeed my Lord they are not through-paced We see how Barclay Watson Widdrington Sheldon Bekinsaw and others have been censured hated and reproached for maintaining the contrary as of old the more loyal Sorbonists now sinking under this prodigious Tyranny to their everlasting reproach as well as prejudice of the poor Jansenists who with the Church of England are the only Confessors amongst all the Christian Professors now extant that I could ever read of or discover And though one might instance in some few honest Papists who were in times passed of this Opinion too yet when I seriously reflect how many are nowadays devoted to the Jesuit I am amazed to consider to what disloyal temptations they are exposed even by their very Institution Indeed Cardinal Perron denounces severely against any who shall dare to perpetrate the Crimes but in the same breath he ingenuously tells us that he means it whilst they are Kings since being once Excommunicated they are no more so but become Plebeians or but Wild beasts rather made to be taken and destroyed and therefore that their new Saint Clement who murdered Henry the Third did not kill the King because he was deposed Which Lesson was well took forth in our late Holy War at home when they were by no means to kill the KING forsooth but to shoot at CHARLES STUART For thus have all the malicious Topics and devilish Arguments been made use of by our late Fanatics as if this Cardinal had inspired them witness what they borrow of him from the Prophet Abias' deposing Roboam as they call it De Laicis c. 7. Azarias' outing Ozias etc. Bellarmin affirms that Kings are not only subject to Popes but even to the most inferior Deacons We have a Pack My Lord amongst us that would think themselves much injured to be called Jesuits yet speaking of the Consistorian Discipline and power of Eldership are bold to say Non hic excipitur Episcopus aut Imperator to omit the famous T. C. and the many others I could bring on the Stage suffragans of this Doctrine had we no worse experience of it But it is not their Passion for God but for the World which makes these men defend their Interest by such pernicious Consequences Add to these the Crew of Anabaptists and those other truculent Champions of the Fifth Monarchy who have improved their Principles to that notorious height and danger that God forbid their Dominion should ever be founded in his majesty 's Grace For let us but examine what they Teach and what they have practised from that infallible Dictator in S. Peter's Chair to the meanest Sectarian their Writings and their Actions from Knipperdolling to Venner from Pope Hildebrand to Pope Henderson are sufficiently instructive what Princes are to expect One would think the divine right of Kings as Superiors Obedience to Governors Relative duty of Subjects and Primitive Example had been so positively described and secured by that admirable Institution of Christianity that all who profess themselves of that Belief Disciples of that Religion and who pretend so much to extraordinary Illumination from the fatal examples of the Event of all Rebellions since the very first defection of Lucifer to this period of ours should be sufficiently convinced of their duty to Kings as God's Vice-gerents on Earth and of that irrefragable Truth That those who resist shall receive to themselves Damnation But since a sort of Monsters there are who neither believe Moses nor the Prophets no nor God himself who rose from the dead to assert and plant the Doctrine of Obedience to the Civil Magistrate by the Preaching of his holy Apostles and their Successors till of late what moral Confidence can a Prince repose in the Pretences of any who are thus sworn and addicted to their Tenants I speak here as to the Jesuits in particular and to those who of late lay at his majesty 's feet out of that Religious pretence the Tenderness of Conscience without ever showing either Religion or Conscience in any their Actions or Writings hitherto relating purely to his majesty 's Interest the Church of England or her Friends whiles the years of her most barbarous Persecution continued but which if they had done I would here turn Apologist in their Cause and plead it with affection But say those of the Church of Rome what is the Disloyalty you lay to our charge Name us the Persons and produce the Instances The Answer is short That whiles the Doctrine of Deposing Kings whatever is pretended remembering that of Charles the Vth In Pact Car. V. cum Clem. VII Vocem esse Jacobi manus autem Esau abetted by so many late Decrees of Popes remains uncondemned there is reason sufficient for Princes to be jealous of favouring a Party who suck in those Principles with their Milk as many of them at least as are Alumni of the Jesuits See the Book entitled The Jesuits reasons unreasonable p. 2. published by a Roman Cath. and who by the Papists own acknowledgement are not worthy to be considered no not as to Exemption from the most rigorous of our Laws against them 'T is the same Author who frankly confesseth that F. Parsons did most deservedly draw it upon that whole Order p. 9 10 etc. by his continual and intolerable Practices against the Crowned heads of this Nation from whence he infers that neither can his Majesty be safe for reasons unanswerable to any that shall take the pains but to survey their Tenants and the voluntary Obligation into which they have precipitated themselves Slaves to the Pope as they are and to that Theological Bawd the Doctrine of Probability But would they now cut off this Objection at once and give just satisfaction to the Charge as most assured I am divers of his majesty 's loyal Subjects of their persuasion in many other things earnestly contend for though with the sacrifice of that whole pragmatical Order which thus has set the World in Combustion let them and the entire Party subscribe to all Doctrines which deny the Pope's authority of Deposing Kings and releasing Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance and let the Pope himself approve it and cause an Index expurgatorius to be made of all those Authors we have enumerated and the Books that more lately maintain and favour it since even all this were little enough to secure his Majesty from too just apprehension whiles that sacrilegious Thesis asserting the Pope's Dominion over Temporals and Infallibility even extra Generale Concilium is yet publicly cherished which enables him to rescind all this in a moment and Absolve to morrow what he Obliges to day Brunus de Haeret. l. 3. cap. 15. and make that to pass for the undoubted Word of God which is in truth the very Doctrine of Devils For if as a most pious and learned Prelate of our Church has explained it truly and ex animo they are otherwise affected Bishop of Down and Conner Ser. on 5. Nou. they should do well to unsay what hath been said and declare themselves by public Authority against such Doctrines and say whether or no their Determinations shall be de Fide If they be than all those famous Catholic Doctors Tho. Aquinas Bellarmine Creswel Mariana Emanuel Sà etc. are Heretics and their Canons teach Heresy and many of their Popes to be condemned as Heretical for practising and teaching Deposition of Princes by an Authority usurped against and in prejudice of the Christian Faith But if their Answers be not de Fide than they had as good say nothing for the danger is not at all decreased because if there be Doctors on both sides by their own * Charity maintained by Cath. c. 7. assertion they may without sin follow either but yet more safely if they follow the most received and the most authorised And whither this Rule will lead them I will be judged by any man that hath considered the Premises Briefly either this thing must remain in the same state it is and our Princes be still exposed to so extreme hazards or else let his Holiness seat himself in his Chair condemn these Doctrines vow against their future Practice limit his Ordo ad spiritualia contain himself within the limits of Causes directly and merely Ecclesiastical disclaim all power so much as indirect over Prince's Temporals and all this with an intent to oblige all Christendom Which when I see done I shall be most ready to believe that nothing in Popery doth either directly or by necessary consequence destroy Loyalty to our lawful Prince but not till then having so much evidence to the contrary Thus far this reverend Prelate And that this is likewise the sense and as I affirmed earnest desire of all the honest men of the Romish Church is most convincingly as well as boldly and loyally asserted by that learned Remonstrant * Remonstrantia Hibernorum contra Lovanienses Ultramontanásque censuras de incomparabili Regum Imperio subditorum que Fidelitate & Obedientia indispensabili ex SS Scriptures Patribus Theologis vindicata 1665. R. Carron whose Vindication of what I here produce against the Jesuits and other Popish Errors that * Querimonia ad Alex. seven ibid. zizania as he truly styles it of Infallibility etc. the subject of the ensuing Treatise I find published since this Preface was finished and I heartily wish it may produce an Effect suitable to the attempt of that candid and ingenuous Person that so though we have many other failings to charge them withal they may yet lessen by degrees and as God shall please to enlighten them till we come to a perfect and consummate Reconciliation In the mean time with what forehead my Lord can this Faction cry out against us as cruel or at our Sanctions as unjust whilst his Sacred Majesty has a faculty commensurate to his Piety and a Prerogative which can gratify his merciful nature without reversing what his Predecessors have enacted who reigned in such prosperity not so much because they executed the Penalties as for that they had the power to do it and did use it prudently and I confess I was infinitely pleased to find it avowed by a Romanist that they were themselves the occasion of those Sanguinary laws as they would brand them and to justify them too as the forecited Author has most ingenuously acknowledged And how indeed can that Party exclaim against his Majesty or his Laws accusing the Regulars as the persons culpable and the Seculars as the persons accidentally and for their sakes only obnoxious and punished whose demerits were the cause It is for these therefore my Lord I would sooner plead for mercy and in earnest I wish it might consist with the Wisdom of the Legislative power to state a difference between them But we have already described the Expedient Let them first renounce their dangerous Opinions by some such public irreversible and authentic Act as may totally cancel the just presumption which lies at their doors and at once remove that intolerable scandal which the World does universally charge them withal and which even one of their own acknowledges to be their due after a thousand notorious Examples Proprium esse Ecclesiae odisse Caesares Guicciard Hist. l. 2. That Popes have even a natural Antipathy to Kings It is the Reverse my Lord of these Doctrines and of all those fatal Images of Jesuitical Disloyalty for which the Church of England alone will have the honour to be deservedly celebrated to Posterity And if his Majesty do not love and cherish her above all the Churches and Professions under Heaven a Church which has so constantly maintained a Truth so ancient so pure and so obliging to Kings even in the sense and interpretation of her very Adversaries who have the least grain of true Illumination and ingenuity the Miracle of His and Her stupendious Restauration will rise up in Judgement against us But He has already done it to his eternal renown and I have no more to add but that God Almighty would still maintain what he has so signally wrought amongst us And for those heroic Assertors of what not only concerns the French Kings but indeed all the Crowned Heads of Christendom besides mine Option and Augur is That as God gave Egypt to the King of Babylon for his hire and reward in having chastised those wicked Nations he was angry with so it may please him to give these sincere Defenders of Jansenius and other Truths in opposition to the Errors of the Roman Court the Light in fine of his divine Truth and to emerge out of that Egyptian Darkness in which the rest are so miserably involved These with my Prayers for your Lordship 's consummate Felicity are the Votes of My Lord Your Honour's most obedient and most obliged servant THE PERNICIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF THE New HERESY of the JESUITS AGAINST The KING and the STATE Advice to the Reader THis Treatise being written two years since and several Copies thereof dispersed among divers persons of Condition it was deemed the conjuncture of the present Affairs might render the Publication of it necessary for the benefit both of the Church and the State But it is thought fit to advertise that the Author of this Piece having made use in it of some Memoires concerning Infallibility which he had before prepared these Notes happening to fall into the hands of a person of small judgement he caused them to be printed under the Title of A Defence of the Liberties of the Gallican Church etc. adding of himself a great many impertinent and indiscreet particulars which have exceedingly disfigured these Memoires IT does not suffice that our Divines have represented to the Church the Exorbitances of the New Heresy of the Jesuits in what concerns Religion and the honour of God to whom they would equal a mortal man by a most sacrilegious impiety the faithful servants of the King find themselves obliged likewise to elevate their voices and to represent those pernicious Consequences as to what regards the safety of his Sacred Person and the good of his Estate The Apostle S. Peter establishes for the two principal parts of Piety the Fear of God and the Honour which is due to Kings Deum timete Regem honorificate If these Divines have satisfied the first of these obligations by the just aversion they have stirred up in all pious persons to the pernicious adulation of the Jesuits which they have discovered to be no less than a kind of Idolatry it were but reasonable that others should satisfy the second by inspiring all those who bear any love or affection to their King with the horror which they ought to have of a Doctrine which may prove to funest to his Person and is in danger of ravishing from him the most august and supreme Quality that he has received from God which is to depend on him alone in Temporals and to be independent of all other Powers upon the face of the Earth True it is that his Majesty has already been advertised of it and has clearly perceived by that light and vivacity of spirit which all Europe admires in a Prince so young of what pernicious Consequence this novel Doctrine was which they would introduce into his State and the advantage which they might take to establish their pretensions who design nothing more than to reach the Heads of Kings and even subject them in Temporals It were fit therefore that all the world knew as much that those who are not sensibly touched with the prospect of an Error so prejudicial to Religion as falsely imagining it to concern the Divines only may at least be affected with the consideration of the prejudice which it may bring to the State and to the sacred and inviolable rights of the Crowns of our Kings But since the address which has been made use of by the Partisans of those corrupt Opinions has been to infuse it into the minds of the people masked under the vizor of Religion and respect to the Pope and to decry the opposers of it as enemies to the holy See it is necessary we should defeat their artifice by discovering it to the world and by teaching them to distinguish as our fathers have done before us the Apostolical See from the Court Politic of Rome which are things totally different For that which we are to understand by the Apostolical Seat is that Spiritual Authority of the Head of the Church which jesus Christ gave to S. Peter residing in the Pope and which all Christians are obliged to acknowledge and reverence by an inseparable union with it as the very centre of the Communion of the Church But the Court Politic of Rome is nothing else but that Swarm of Courtiers who are about the Pope's person to advance their fortunes and thrust themselves into Church-Dignities and the person of Popes considered not as Popes but as Men who being as obnoxious as others to their Ambition and other humane passions suffer themselves to be often transported by the adulation of their Courtiers to attribute to themselves without reason Rights and Prerogatives which God never gave them and that are equally prejudicial to the Sovereignty of Kings the repose of the People the tranquillity of the Church the good of the Catholic Religion and in fine to the true and solid grandeur of the holy See itself In this sense it is we shall speak of the Court of Rome in the present Treatise as so many great persons and Saints have already done by opposing themselves to their unjust pretensions without at all thinking they did thereby in the least violate the respect which they owed the Pope as Head of the Church to which they on the contrary believed these Opinions must needs be most disadvantageous And we have so much the more liberty to do it now since the moderation of the present Incumbent speaks him very far from these ambitious thoughts Now amongst all these illegitimate Usurpations of the Court of Rome thus considered there has none of them proved more funest to Christian Princes the Church and even to Popes themselves then that by which some of them have been transported to domineer over Kings to make themselves their Superiors and Judges in the administration of their Kingdoms and by pretending of a right when they fancied it for the cause of Religion to depose them of their Empires and give their Estates to others or to abandon them to the first Usurper who had power to make himself Master It 's impossible to describe those horrid Confusions which this pretence of theirs hath brought forth in Italy and in Germany for so many Ages together the Wars it has kindled the Blood it has made to be spilt the Provinces it has rendered desolate the Cities it has ruined the Scandals and Disorders which it has filled the Church with But one of its worst effects is that it has rendered the holy See which should as well be the centre of the love of Catholics as of the Unity of the Church odious both to Kings and People by making them to look upon the Vicar of jesus Christ not as a common Father full of tenderness for all his Children but as a Temporal Prince that would trample all other Princes under his feet and render himself absolute Master of all the Kingdoms of the Earth This is one of the main causes which has made so many people revolt against the Church of Rome and the most usual pretence which they have taken to hinder many Christians from paying that observance to Popes which they are obliged to render them by confounding it with these odious excuses For having once anticipated the People with this erroneous opinion That one could not acknowledge in the Pope that real Authority which jesus Christ has given him without owning that also which these Sycophants attribute to him over Temporals and States they have by an hateful Schism kept them from acknowledging the Pope as Head of the Church for fear lest they should be bound likewise to own him for their King and Master It concerns the Church therefore to take away this colour from Schism which is the greatest of all mischiefs by separating the Spiritual power of the Sovereign Bishop as it has been instituted by jesus Christ and acknowledged by all Catholics from this false and exorbitant power which Ambition and Flattery would add to it repugnant to the spirit of jesus Christ and the Doctrine of the Apostles And therefore we must needs confess that the Zeal of the Parliaments of France for the maintenance of the Sovereignty of Kings against the enterprises of those who subverting the Order of God would have it to depend upon this Spiritual Jurisdiction is no less advantageous to the Church then to the State and that on the other part there is nothing more prejudicial to them both than that low and fleshly prudence of these Theologues who think to exalt the divine Grandeur of the prime Minister of the new Law which wholly consists in the love to eternal good things and in the despising of the things of this World by secular and temporal advantages which God did never annex to him or that seek to enlarge their fortunes by this pretended Zeal for the enlargement of the Authority of the Pope 'T is known to the whole World that the Jesuits have within these hundred years been the chief defenders of these ambitious pretences and that their Society has employed the most renowned of its Writers to disseminate this Doctrine  It is this which has been taught by (a) In his Book of the King and his Institut. john Mariana (b) Tom. 3. disp. 1. q. 12. puncto 2. Gregory de Valentia (c) Tom. 4. par 3. tr 4 par 411. Alphonsus Salmeron (d) In his Truth defended under the name of Francis des Montaignes p. 70. Ludovicus Richome (e) Of justice and Right tom 1. tr 2. disp. 19 Lovys Molina (f) In his Controversies tom 1. of the Pope l. 5. c. 6. and in his Book against Barclay Robert Bellarmine (g) In his Sermons of Saints Sermon of the Charity of S. Peter pag. 70. johannes Osorius (h) In his Amphitheatre of honour lib. 1. ca 12. Carolus Scribanius (i) In his Letter to a French Friend approved by the general Aquaviva pag. 11. Andrew Eudemon (k) Moral Instructions tom 2. l. 4. c. 19 johannes Azor (l) In his Treatise of mitigation towards the Catholics of England Robert Parsons (m) Tom. 5. of Censures disp 15. sect 6. num 7. p. 270. and inhis Book entitled The Defence of the Catholic Faith etc. l. 3. c. 22. and 23. and l. 6. c. 4. and 8. where he teaches prodigicus things against the life of Kings as this detestable Position Rex talis post depositionem incipit esse tyrannus titulo quia non est legitimus Rex nec justo titulo regnum possidet Ergò extunc poterit tanquam omnino tyrannus tractari & consequenter à quocunque privato poterit interfici Francis Suarez (n) In par disp 87. resp. ad 3. rat & tom 2. in c. 2. disp. 169. c. 4. n. 43. Edit Antuerp an 1621. Gabriel Vasquez (o) Of justice and Right l. 2. c. 1.33 dub 2. and in other Books one of which is entitled An Apologetical Dispute for the Power of the high Priest Leonardus Lessius (p) In his Book Heretic Chauvesouris or Vespertilio concerning the excellency of the Jesuits Order pag. 158 & 159. jacobus Gretserus (q) In his Controversy of England 1. edit. p. 108 125 127 136. and 2. edit. p. 122 140 142 152. Martinus Becanus (r) Of Apostasy and Schism c. 30 and 31. Antonius Santarellus (s) In his Treatise of Controversies in particular c. 6. q. 10. Vincentius Filiutius (t) Tractat. 2. disput. 2. q. 5. art 102. Stephen Bauny etc. On the contrary it is well known what extraordinary care the Parliaments of Paris and the Universities of France have taken to repress the Authors of these pernicious Opinions the one by their Arrests and the other by their Censures It 's above an hundred years since that the Parliament of Paris gave a famous Arrest upon this Subject the 4 of December 1561. against a certain Bachelor in Divinity who had put it into his Thesis That it was in the Power of the Pope to excommunicate Kings to give away their Kingdoms and to absolve their Subjects of their Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity This Proposition was declared seditious the Bachelor being not to be found it was ordered that the Beadle of the Sorbon vested in a red Hood should disavow it before a Precedent of the Court and the chief of the Faculty of Divinity and that during four years' space there should no public Disputation be permitted in the College where it was defended This whole affair is twice told us in the Bibliothec du Droit under the words Interdictions p. 4478. and Effigies p. 1110. And Bouchel who is the Author of this Bibliotheca in reciting of this History adds this Remark The plain truth is that within these fifty years passed there is come a certain new Sect to be planted amongst us called by the name of Jesuits who maintain Propositions quite contrary to ours to the very ruin of the State The same Parliament testifies its zeal for the Interests of the King and Crown upon several other occasions as when it condemned to the fire the 8 of june 1610. the Book of the jesuit Mariana entitled De Rege & Regis institutione and that after the same manner jun 26. 1614 it treated that of Suarez entitled Defensio Fidei Catholicae But there was never any thing more celebrious upon this subject then that which passed 1626. in the censure of Santarel This jesuit had written a Book of Heresy Schism Apostasy etc. printed at Rome 1625. permissu superiorum in which following the common sentiments of his Society he taught That the Pope might punish Kings and Princes with temporal pains depose and deprive them of their Kingdoms and States for the crime of Heresy and for other causes as when they were culpable of any fault if he find it expedient when they become negligent of their duties when they are incapable to govern and their persons burdensome to their Kingdoms He adds That the Apostles were not subject to the secular Princes but de facto only not the jure and in sum that since the Pontifical Majesty had been established all other Potentates were become but his Vassals So soon as ever this Book appeared in France the Sorbon knowing that the Doctrine was invented and published for the universal destruction of Civil Polity and particularly the Monarchy of France which was at that time governed by the most Christian most clement and just King Lewis the XIIIth that in treading the steps of their Ancestors she might testify her zeal and affection as well towards this Religious Prince as towards the whole most Christian Kingdom and at the same time satisfy that which all honest men required of her resolved to examine the two Chapters of this Book of Santarel 30 and 31 where this matter was treated of And on the 1 of April 1626. having first heard the Deputies report and considered the several Opinions of all the Doctors she condemned the Positions being the common Opinion of the Jesuits for a novel false and erroneous Doctrine repugnant to the Word of God and that renders odious the dignity of the Pope opens a gap to all Schism derogates from the Supreme Authority of Kings which depends on God alone disturbs the public tranquillity tends to the ruin of Kingdoms States and Republics debauches Subjects from that Obedience and Submission due to their Sovereigns inciting them to Factions Rebellions Seditions in sum to commit Parricides against the persons of their natural Princes This Censure approved by the whole Body of the University of Paris and the rest of the Universitics of France was authorised also by a famous Decree of Parliament of the 13. March 1626. which declared the Propositions contained in this Book of Santarel false scandalous and seditious as tending to the subversion of Sovereign Powers ordained and established by God and to the stirring up of Subjects against their Princes withdrawing their Obedience inducing them to attempt against their Persons and States disturbing of the public peace and ordered that the Book should be torn and burnt and that the Jesuits should be obliged to disavow and detest it and to approve the Censure of the Sorbon This vigorous resistance of the Parliament and Sorbon has of late rendered the Jesuits a little more reserved in producing to the world this pernicious Doctrine But as they never abandon what they have once undertaken they have invented a way of establishing it after a more dextrous but more dangerous manner for daring no more to propose it grossly and in terminis they work more subtly to introduce the Principles on which it depends by necessary consequence wisely judging that if once by their artifice they can but deceive the vigilancy of our Magistrates and the Sorbon they shall easily make the People swallow it  they please and that as a Truth indubitable which they will show by a necessary consequence from what they have already made pass for a most Catholic Verity This is that which the Jesuits have done in maintaining that famous Thesis of the 12 December 1661. as a Catholic Truth repugnant to the Greek Heresy concerning the Primacy of the Pope namely That Jesus Christ hath given to all Popes whenever they shall speak è Cathedra the same Infallibility himself had as well in matters of Right as in those of Fact And that we might not imagine there were any great mystery in this condition When they should speak out of their Chair cum loquerentur ex Cathedra they expressly declare that this Condition does not concern the Pope's speaking in the head of a General Council And in proposing for example for one Constitution made ex Cathedra the two Constitutions on the Five Propositions they give us clearly to understand that they do not pretend that to the end the Pope should speak from his Chair it were necessary for him to assemble so much as a Council of the Bishops of his Province as the other Popes did or that he should consult the College of Cardinals as they have since done enterprising nothing how inconsiderable soever but by the advice of their Brethren De consilio Fratrum but that 't is sufficient for him to speak in his Bulls or from the Constitutions and Decrees which use to be pasted up on the Gates of S. Peter and in Campo de Fiori this being the only solemnity which at Rome they pretend does render them sufficiently authentic and that without so much as thinking it necessary they should be received and published in the Provinces See now to what a height the Jesuits pretensions are come All that the Popes say in their Bulls and Constitutions as well on matters and questions of Fact as those of Right is to be looked on as indubitably true as if jesus Christ had himself avowed it the Pope's Infallibility being still the same according to their reckoning on these occasions and encounters as that of the Son of God himself Now how little so ever one knows of the Fundamentals of Santarellism that is to say of the Doctrine which affirms the Pope has power to depose Kings it must needs be acknowledged that it is established by this Thesis of the Jesuits and that it is after a sort made more pernicious and criminal then ever it has hitherto been For the defenders of this Doctrine so prejudicial to Kings were contented to establish this temporal power in Popes by showing that they themselves did attribute it to themselves by several Bulls and Decrees and that so we were bound to believe them as being infallible in matters concerning Faith But there was none of them that yet durst deny but that Popes might fail and be mistaken in the exercise of this power because none of them did ever think them infallible in Questions which concerned the Fact whereas the Jesuits now presume on both They render Popes absolutely Masters of Kings in attributing to them who by so many Bulls have defined their Superiority over the Temporalty of Kings the very same Infallibility with jesus Christ even in matters of Right so as they leave a King whom a Pope had deposed no place of appeal or so much as to complain that the Pope might be mistaken in the matter of Fact upon which they had judged him worthy of so severe a punishment since by this new Doctrine of the College of Clermont he is equally infallible whether he judge in general that he has this power to depose Kings which is the Question de jure or in particular that such a King merits to be so used which is the Question de facto We must therefore clear these two points One that the Infallibility of the Pope in matters of Right is according to the Jesuits the establishment of his Power over Kings the other that his Infallibility in matters of Fact takes away all means from the Kings they please to depose to complain of so rigorous a Sentence For the first 't is an easy matter to convince all the world of it nor ought we to imagine it a Consequence held only by those who profess themselves enemies to the Jesuits Doctrine and which the Jesuits disavow 't is a Consequence which they themselves derive from it which they  acknowledge must needs follow and which does so indeed naturally and of necessity For Pope's as jesuits' themselves have learned us have so many ways decided that they have power to degrade Kings and dispose of their Kingdoms  they judge it for the interest of Religion that if to be Catholic one is obliged to consider all that Popes say in their Chair that is by their Bulls as Decisions of infallible authority and Oracles pronounced even by Christ himself Kings their Ministers and Parliaments must either renounce the quality of Catholic or else tamely acknowledge that Kings are Sovereigns independent in respect of their own Subjects and other Princes but nothing so in regard of the Pope but that he has power to make them descend from their Throne and to resolve them into their simple Originals so as exercising a Royalty superior to theirs it may be said of his Empire as an heathen Poet said of that of God Omne sub regno graviore regnum est All this is an infallible consequent of Infallibility as the Jesuits well prove For who can choose but believe that Popes have the power to depose Kings if once he be persuaded that their Decisions are so many Articles of Faith when it shall be showed him that Gregory the VIIth has decided it in express terms in a Council held at Rome Anno 1067 according to Onuphrius Baronius and all the Jesuits Quòd Papae liceat Imperatores deponere quòd à Fidelitate iniquorum subditos potest absolvere Whence (a) In Apol. pro potest sum Pontif. part 2. sect 3. fol. 396. Planè tenendum est hanc doctrinam non esse ambiguam ità ut utrumque opinari liceat sed omnino certum ità ut absque injuria fidei negari non possit Primò igitur id probo Quia hae Propositiones in terminis definitae sunt in Concilio Romano Quòd Papae liceat Imperatores deponere quòd à Fidelitate iniquorum subditos potest absolvere Atqui definitio facta à summo Pontifice cum Synodo ad Fidem pertiner Lessius the jesuit concludes supposing the Principle of Infallibility That this Doctrine is no problematick Doctrine but a constant Truth not to be denied without violation of our very Faith We must absolutely believe says he that this Doctrine viz. that the Pope may depose Kings is an undoubted truth and not such as we may believe what we please of but such an one as is entirely certain not to be contradicted without wounding our Faith And this I prove first Because these Propositions are defined in proper terms in the Roman Synod under Gregory the VIIth where it is affirmed that the Pope may depose Emperors and absolve the Subjects of wicked Princes from their Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity Now a Definition made by a Pope in Council is matter of Faith This is clear now without mincing nor can it be more expressly declared that the power to depose Kings is a necessary consequent of Infallibility so as those Jesuits must needs be very impudent who shall after this dare to affirm that they are their Enemies who derive this sequel from their Doctrine The jesuit Cardinal (b) Bellarminus sub nomine Sculkenii adversus Widringtonum Haereticum est dicere Pontificem ut Pontificem & ex jure divino non habere potestatem Principes seculares suo Principatu exuendi cum id bonum spirituale sive ingens Ecclesiae necessitas requirit Probatur Conclusio Ista sententia est haeretica cujus contradictoria est de Fide Sed Pontificem habere potestatem deponendi Principes est de Fide est enim definitum & conclusum à Gregorio VII in Council Rom. Quòd Papae liceat etc. Bellarmine under the feigned name of Sculkenius writing against Widrington proves in the same manner by this Gregorian Decree that the Pope's Superiority over Kings is an Article of Faith 'T is an Heresy says he to affirm that the Pope as Pope and ex jure divino has not the power to depose Secular Princes of their States as oft as the public good or some urgent necessity of the Church does require it I prove this Conclusion An Opinion becomes heretical when its contradictory is de Fide But it is de Fide that the Pope has power to depose Princes since it has been defined and concluded by Gregory the VIIth in a Roman Council where it says expressly That the Pope may depose an Emperor Now who can deny this Conclusion that holds but the Principle which is That what has been defined and concluded by a Pope is de Fide Is not this Argument of the Cardinal invincible supposing the Maxim to be true By consequent then who can doubt but that according to the Jesuits opinion and the truth itself the power of deposing Kings is in the Pope a certain Consequence of his Infallibility The same Gregory the VIIth has so often decided the same Point that no man questions his pretence of making it an Article of Faith as may yet be seen in the Bull of the Deposition of the Emperor Henry the IVth made likewise in Council where addressing his speech to S. Peter and S. Paul he thus expostulates Now therefore exert and vindicate your power O great and most holy Princes of the Apostles that all the world may take notice and acknowledge that if you can bind and lose in Heaven you can also on Earth dispose of Empires of Kingdoms Principalities and Marquisates in sum of all men's goods and fortunes whatsoever by taking them away from those who deserve them not and by bestowing them on others For if you judge things Spiritual shall we believe you have not the power to judge of Temporal and Secular Let all the Kings and Princes of the Age learn what your grandeur is and your power and not dare to despise the Commandments of your Church and be sure to leave such prompt and lasting marks in the judgement which you exercise against Henry that his ruin be not attributed to the fate of arms or fortuitous accidents of War but to your sole and almighty power In consequence of this he denounced to the Emperor as from God that he should never win battle But if Popes are infallible according to the Jesuits in actions past 't is certain at least that they are not in those which are to come For never did Prince gain so many remaining Victor in more than 50 pitched Battles and having at the very first slain the person whom his Holiness had designed to make Emperor in his place I could recount a number more of Passages relating to the same Pope where he argues for the same Doctrine as visibly founded in the Scripture and annexed to the Papal dignity For 't is not imaginable that he should pretend only this right over Emperors because the Popes had so much contributed to the re-establishment of the Western Empire On the contrary 't is perspicuous that his pretence was over all Kings and that it was built on that Supposition of his viz. that the power of the Keys contained in it the Temporal Superiority which made him set upon the Crown he sent to Rodulphus Usurper of the Empire this Latin Verse Petra dedit Petro Petrus Diadema Rodulpho To show that he believed he had power to dispose of Kingdoms by a right pretended to be given S. Peter by jesus Christ himself 'T is likewise on the same basis he threatened Alphonsus' King of Arragon to stir up his Subjects against him if he gave him not speedy satisfaction concerning a certain affair As according to Cardinal Bellarmine he braved Philip the Ist King of France to show that he exempted none But nothing does so evidently discover that one cannot acknowledge the Pope to be infallible but that at the same moment we must acknowledge him likewise above Kings in Temporals as that famous Decision of Pope Boniface the VIIIth has done in the Bull Unam Sanctam approved by Leo the Xth in the Council of Lateran and the use which the favourers of the Roman Court make of this Bull to establish its pretensions There this Pope defines That both the one and the other Sword appertains to the Church and to the Pope That the Temporal Sword is subordinate to the Spiritual and the Temporal Authority to the Authority Spiritual That if this Spiritual power deviate from the right it must be judged by the Spiritual authority That this power was bestowed on S. Peter and his Successors and That whoever resists this Subordination of Power resists Order in establishing two Principles like the Manichees Whence he concludes that it is necessary to Salvation that every humane power should submit itself to the Bishop of Rome Cardinal Bellarmine a jesuit in his Book against Barclay concerning the Power of the Pope proves by this Bull that Kings are subject to the Pope in Temporals and this Doctrine is certain and most indubitable Now that it is says he a thing constant and evident that the Sovereign Bishop may for just causes be judge of Temporals and sometimes depose Temporal Princes we prove by the Extravagant Unam Sanctam de majoritate & obedientia which shows us that Sword is subordinate to Sword that is that the Temporal Authority is below the Spiritual and that if the Temporal neglect his duty it shall be judged by the Spiritual And for fear it should be objected that Clement the Vth seems to have revoked this Bull by the Extravagant Meruit de privilegiis he prevents the Objection by saying that Clement the V●h did not revoke the Bull of Pope Boniface but advertised only that this Bull of Boniface had defined nothing new and had only revived the ancient obligation which men have to obey and submit themselves to the Apostolical See in the manner he had before declared and which this Bull does observe that is to say as well in Temporal things as Spiritual Alexander Carrerius of Pavia in a Book entitled De potestate Primi Pontificis adversus impios Politicos Of the power of the Sovereign Bishop against the impious Politicians which is the name he gives to the French and particularly the Parliament proves by the same Bull that the Superiority over Kings in Temporals is an Article of Faith This Power of the Pope says he over the Temporals of Kings is confirmed by the testimony of Jeremiah Jer. 1.10 See I have this day set thee over the Nations and Kingdoms to pull down and to destroy etc. as 't is also decided by the Extravagant Unam Sanctam where 't is said that if the Temporal power deviate from the right it shall be judged by the Spiritual declaring that every humane creature is subject to the Bishop of Rome and that this is necessary to Salvation Therefore Boniface writ to Philip King of France in these terms Know that you are subordinate to us both in the Temporal and Spiritual and we do hold and declare them Heretics who maintain the contrary For there are three marks whereby to distinguish matters of Faith The first is When the Decrees of a Synod are couched in these terms If any one affirm such or such a thing let him be accursed The second when it says that those who maintain the contrary shall be Excommunicate ipso facto And the third when those of the contrary opinion are reputed and held for Heretics In fine Cardinal Baronius having in a certain place mentioned the very Bull concludes that none do deny this Determination of Boniface unless such as are excluded from the Church Haec Bonifacius says he cui assentiuntur omnes nisi qui ab Ecclesia excidit And very well argued it were if to be a member of the Catholic Church it were necessary to believe the Pope infallible since there is nothing more trifling and absurd then those Subterfuges which some Authors retire to to put themselves under covert from this Bull because they would fain support the Pope's Infallibility but dare not maintain his Temporal Sovereignty in France The chief of these is Doctor Duval who in his Treatise of the Power of the Pope avows that Boniface the Eighth did establish his Superiority over the Temporalty of Kings through the whole body of his Bull but says that in all the Bulls there is nothing save the Conclusion which is of Faith and that the Conclusion of this in particular imports only that every creature is subject to the Pope which is true says he as it relates to Spirituals Certainly if the Authority of Kings had need of so pitiful a Reply one would conclude it built on a very weak foundation Nullas habet spes Troja si tales habet For what appearance of Reason is there in this learned Doctor 's Solution 1. How does he pretend we should believe that a Pope who makes a Bull only to establish his Superiority over Temporals which is the thing contested and not over the Spirituals which no body does dispute and that he who speaks throughout his whole Bull of this Superiority in Temporals should in the last line form a Conclusion different from the Principles which he has established and that we are only to regard this last line 2. The word subesse indifferently signifying a subjection in Temporals as well as in Spirituals is it not clearly expressed and determined to Temporals by all that precedes it 3. How shall we ever comprehend what a Bull means but by the way it was then understood when it was made as well by those who opposed it as those who defended it and do not we know the troubles which then disturbed all France and the Church caused by this pretence of the Pope maintained by his Partisans and contested by all the French 4. In fine has not Boniface himself explained his own words by another Bull shorter than this which he sent to King Philip in these terms Scire te volumus quòd in Spiritualibus & in Temporalibus nobis subes aliud credentes Haereticos deputamus Whence Carrerius as we have already seen concludes well supposing the Pope infallible that those who disagree concerning the Pope's Superiority over the Temporals of Kings are Heretics And the French of those times without amusing themselves with Monsieur Duval's Sophistry answered after another manner and sufficiently testified that the opinion of Infallibility was not so much as known in France See an Act of the whole Kingdom against these Bulls of Boniface VIIIth as 't is inserted in the first Tome of the Liberties of the Gallican Church Of You Sir our most Noble Lord by the Grace of God King of France the people of Your Kingdom supplicate and desire because it behoves them so to do that You preserve the Sovereign Freedom of your Kingdom which is that You own and acknowledge no Sovereign on the Earth over Your Temporals but God alone and that You give all the World to understand that Pope Boniface does manifestly err and commit a most notorious mortal sin in sending You word by his Letters and Bulls that himself was Sovereign of Your Temporals etc. and those who should believe the contrary he esteemed as Heretics Also that You cause to be declared that we are bound to hold the Pope himself an Heretic and not You good King and all the liege people of Your Kingdom who have ever believed and do believe the contrary The same Protestation is to be seen in several Acts inserted in that Collection which Mons. du Puy has made of the difference between King Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface where you 'll see how Pope Boniface's Bulls were then explained and what was the opinion of France touching Infallibility 'T is in vain to strive to make any other replies to these kind of Pope's Decrees than such as the French of that Age did before us For as there 's nothing to which the Court of Rome aspires with greater passion then to this Temporal Empire so neither is there any thing which the Popes have established with so much industry Cardinal Bellarmine sums up no less than 18 since Gregory the VIIth to our times who manifestly attributed to themselves this right as they called it of deposing Kings and chastising them temporally even to the privation of their States viz. Victor the IIIᵈ Urban the IIᵈ Paschal the IIᵈ Gelasius the IIᵈ Calixtus the IIᵈ Alexander the IIIᵈ Innocentius the IIIᵈ Honorius the IIIᵈ Gregory the IXth Innocent the IVth Boniface the VIIIth Clement the VIth Paul the IIᵈ julius the IIᵈ Paeul the IIIᵈ Pius the Vth Gregory the XIIIth and Sixtus the Vth He counts to 16 or 17 Kings and Emperors against whom Popes have pretended this right of Sovereignty as a debt due to them amongst which there are 5 French Kings Philip the Ist Philip the Fair Lewis the XIIth Henry the IIIᵈ and Henry the IVth Baronius mentions also the Excommunication of a world of Germans who are not yet well agreed concerning the Pope's Power by which it appears that they always pretended to make it an Heresy when at any time they were the strongest party Nor is there any thing more frequent in these Bulls than their menacing Kings and Princes to deprive them of their States in case of Disobedience Which universally betrays that Passion which the Court of Rome has to infuse this belief into the minds of the People But if one could forget those other enterprises of Rome against our Kings which are founded upon this pretended Superiority as this Superiority is upon Infallibility since France has so universally hindered their effects yet we cannot but remember that which made us lose Navarre because the wound is yet bleeding Ferdinand had no other pretext to swallow it up from john d' Albret Great-Grandfather to Henry the Great besides a Bull which he obtained of julius the IIᵈ against the King and Queen of Navarre importing Privation of their Kingdom for having assisted Lewis the XIIth whom it called Schismatic and as having denied passage to the Army which Ferdinand King of Arragon would have sent into France to assist the King of England in the conquest of Guienne I know very well that Cardinal du Perron to render this Doctrine of the Power of Popes over the Temporals of Kings less odious to the French tells us that the real cause of the loss of the Kingdom of Navarre was the breach of the Alliance which the King of Navarre had with Ferdinand King of Arragon which Ferdinand pretended to have been established on condition that if the Kings of Navarre should violate it the Kingdom of Navarre should again revert to the Spaniards who had rendered it by deed in Writing to the race of Albret and that Pope Iulius' Excommunication was neither the true Cause nor real Pretence but a certain tail of a Pretence which though Ferdinand had made no use of he had notwithstanding pretended that the Kingdom of Navarre appertained to him and consequently possessed it But I know as well too that there is nothing worse founded than this answer as Mons. du Puy has made appear by most invincible proofs in his Treatise of the Right of the King to the Kingdom of Navarre For he does there prove by the Spanish Historians themselves that Ferdinand during the Usurpation and whiles he lived had only the Title by the Pope's Excommunication to justify his Arms. He shows how Ferdinand having swallowed up this Kingdom 1512 and being pressed by the King of Navarre 1513 to do him reason defended his possession by no other right but by that of the Excommunication and that in the two most authentic Acts on this subject one whereof is the Will and Testament of Ferdinand by which he bequeathes the Kingdom of Navarre to his Daughter jane Queen of Castille and the other of the Union of that Kingdom to that of Castille it is expressly signified that john d' Albret and Catharine his Wife had been deprived of it by the Pope for having adhered to the Schism of the French Kings against Pope julius the IIᵈ and that the Pope had given him this Kingdom to dispose of as he pleased I omit the other proofs Which sufficiently shows that the Pope's Bull was no tail of Pretext but indeed the only and sole Pretence of that unjust Usurpation which continues to this very day In the second place there is nothing more absurd then to say that the Spaniards had never rendered the Kingdom of Navarre to the race of Albret but with this written Caution That if their Successors should violate the Alliance the Kingdom should revert to the Spaniards For jean d' Albret on whom was the Usurpation was the first of Albret's race who possessed the Kingdom How then could it be said that the Spaniards had rendered it to Albret's race who before never enjoyed it And supposing we did take the word rendered for given it is no less false that the Spaniards were they of Arragon or Castille gave this Kingdom to the race of Albret who in no sort held it of the Spaniards but by the Marriage of Catharine who succeeded King Francis Phoebus his Brother and Francis Phoebus to Elinor his Grandmother wife of Gastion de Foix and sole superviving Daughter of Blanch Queen of Navarre which Lady had espoused john King of Arragon the Father of Ferdinand who being born of another Venture had nothing to do with Navarre So as this pretended Caution can be no other than a mere impertinent Fable without any foundation since the Spaniards having neither rendered nor given the Kingdom of Navarre to the race of Albret they could never appose any caution or condition either in rendering or bestowing it Thirdly The Spaniards themselves could never yet produce any Treaty of Alliance between the Kings of Arragon and those of Navarre where this Condition was opposed though besides all this it be beyond the power of Kings to annex any such Condition since they are not so Masters of their Kingdoms as to transfer them to any others than those who are their legitimate Successors Fourthly In fine 't is plainly false that ever john d' Albret broke any Alliance with Ferdinand but on the contrary Ferdinand it was who invaded Navarre in the month of july Anno 1512 and who made himself master of Pampelona the capital City of that State before there were any French in Navarre which compelled john d' Albret to throw himself into the arms of Lewis the XIIth with whom he was before but in ill intelligence to endeavour to maintain himself against this unjust Usurper who four months before this Treaty of john d' Albret with Lewis had obtained a Bull of Excommunication of the Pope against the King of Navarre as falsely representing that being joined with the King of France excommunicated by the holy See he denied the English free passage to enter into Guienne It is therefore evident that it is only this pretended Power which the Flatterers of the Pope have of late Ages attributed to him to dispossess Kings and make Donations of their Kingdoms to him that can obtain them which has cost our Kings the Kingdom of Navarre since Ferdinand had but this pretence only to invade it and all that the Spaniards would add to it since was never so much as in their heads because it was out of all probability And it is still true that this right is annexed by all those who defend it to this Infallibility We see likewise that ever since this Popes have always favoured the Usurpation of Navarre as a mark of the Power which they pretend to have for the deposing of Kings This is evident by their shunning as much as possible the qualifying our King with the Title of the King of Navarre as in the Bulls of Barberin's Legation 1625 wherein the King being but simply styled King of France it was ordained by Parliament that it should be declared by the Pope that the quality of the King of Navarre had been omitted by inadvertency in the said Bulls and that till that were rectified the Arrest of Verification should not be delivered and the Bulls continue without execution in France But what they could not then obtain by the wise resistance of the Parliament they have now found an Expedient to obtain by the credit which the Jesuits have at Court for finding they had there wrought so great an aversion against the jansenists that there was nothing more desired than their condemnation they believed they could make it be purchased with the loss of the Quality of King of Navarre nor were they at all mistaken in their expectation For Pope Innocent the Xth addressed his Bull to the King by a Breve wherein he only styles him King of France and all who loved the State saw with grief that they received this Breve so injurious to the King with open arms You see how well the Roman Court knows how to profit on occasions and take her advantage she never lets any escape which she does not manage with a singular address But this Breve will one day prove one of its most memorable examples since under colour of ruining the poor jansenists she has opened a gap to establish two of the most considerable points of her Grandeur and which have indeed been the most contested in France The one is That the Pope alone may decide Poins of Faith with an infallible Authority the other That he may give Kingdoms away at pleasure as julius the IIᵈ gave that of Navarre to the Spaniards By all these proofs 't is evident that the Superiority of Popes above Kings in Temporals is an inseparable Position of Infallibility as to the pretence of all those Theologues who are married to the Interest of the Court of Rome especially the jesuits' 'T is also clear that the subtlety of those who have made as if they would separate them hath so little basis that it were an unworthy and dangerous prevarication in those who are obliged to maintain the Supreme Authority of their Prince but to reduce the Right of Kings which is certain and indubitable to so shallow and trifling a defence So as the only means of hindering the establishment of this pernicious Consequence is to stop that so dangerous a Principle and above all not to permit the Jesuits the impudence of making it an Article of Faith and the carrying it even beyond all sorts of bounds and to an Infallibility in Questions de facto which is in sum to have given the fatal blow to the ruin of the Royal Throne This is easy to prove For Pope's being once established superior to Temporal Princes in Temporals as we have showed they cannot fail of obtaining if once we allow them infallible in Questions de jure what defence remains there to a Prince against the stratagems of this Power but the pretence of its being possibly miss-informed and that it was mistaken in the grounds on which it proceeded to despoil him of his State But what means is there of opposing that pretence against a person who shall be in possession of the same Infallibility with jesus Christ in matter of Fact What Christian is there who should dare oppose to jesus Christ that he is mistaken and what were there more easy for a Pope then to ruin this defence since for that he had only to declare by a Bull that he has well examined the Prince's Cause and that he deserves to be Excommunicated and Deposed to oblige all the World to believe that he did merit it indeed Nor let any pretend that 't is not in these kinds of Facts that Popes are infallible For both the Principles and Reasons of the Jesuits tend to it And the benefit of the Church which is the sole foundation of this Imagination will rather incline to believe that God is bound to make the Popes as infallible in affairs so important as the subversion of Kingdoms the consequences whereof are so terrible to Religion itself as in the judgements which they make whether there are or are not Errors in a particular Book which is of itself but of very little consequence Now if the Jesuits without any reason and from an humane apprehension and fear should except these Facts they would not in the least diminish of the pernicious subjects of their Doctrine because the spirits of those who are once imbued with their Opinions would easily break through these weak restraints in which they made believe they would keep them and maugre these groundless exceptions carry their corrupt principles to all their natural consequences So as there is nothing able to oppose the funest effects of this Doctrine which subjects Kings to a foreign Power whiles they permit this double Infallibility of Fact and Right to subsist from which 't is impossible to divorce it I very well know that there are some who seek several pretexts to charm the vigilance of Kings and their Ministers that so they may not perceive how this Doctrine of Infallibility is prejudicial to States One of these Pretences is the affirming that this Infallibility relates to Faith and Doctrine only which are things Spiritual and that have nothing of common with the Temporals of Kings and the rights of their Crowns But there is nothing more unreasonable than this adulterate Colour For 't is true that indeed this temporal is not of Faith itself nor is the Doctrine the immediate Object of Infallibility But one cannot without Heresy deny that it may not be the subject and matter of Faith since 't is an Article of Faith established both by Gospel and the Apostles that we ought to pay Tribute to Caesar which is a temporal thing and that we owe Obedience to Temporal Princes not only to escape the punishment which they may inflict on us if we transgress but because we are in Conscience also obliged to it Non solùm propter iram sed etiam propter Conscientiam So as to persuade Kings that their Temporal is so far remote from Faith that it can be no matter of Faith is to dissolve and break the most sacred bond which unites their Subjects to their Empire to wit that of Conscience and Religion Faith is in itself a thing entirely spiritual and divine but that does no way hinder things humane and temporal from being very often both the subject and matter of it War is a secular thing yet 't is matter of Faith to know whether a Christian Prince may make war And the Anabaptists err in matter of Faith when they maintain that it is unlawful The power which Magistrates have to put Malefactors to death is a temporal thing and yet it belongs to Faith to decide whether jesus christ has left this power to Christians or no and the same Anabaptists who deny it are esteemed Heretics by the Church Usury is a temporal thing yet is it matter of Faith to resolve whether or no it be a sin In like manner the Power of Kings is temporal but it concerns Faith to determine whether the power of the Keys which jesus Christ has given to S. Peter does extend to the breaking of that Obligation and Tie which Subjects have to their Sovereign by absolving them from their Oaths of Allegiance It concerns the interpretation of the words of I. Christ and by consequent has relation to Faith It imports the extent of the power that jesus Christ has given the Pope as his Vicar which we can know nothing of but by divine revelation preserved in the Scriptures and by Tradition and by consequence it is matter of Faith It is no way then to be doubted but the Question whether the Pope have any right to punish Princes with temporal pains and to divest them of their States by virtue of that Authority pretended to be given to S. Peter is no concernment of Faith and therefore 't is in earnest a mere mockery to persuade Kings that the Pope's Infallibility does not extend to them whenas in truth there are none whom it so nearly concerns as they since Pope's having so often decided this Right to be theirs if once the people be suffered to hold them infallible as to what they determine touching Faith none can hinder them from acknowledging also that they do not err in their explication of the words of the Gospel touching the Primacy of S. Peter as of an Empire and Monarchy which extends itself even over the Temporals of Kings But besides this the question is not of what the thing is in truth but what 't is in the opinion of the Jesuits and that the strive to infuse into the World seeing from thence it is the ill effects proceed which this unlucky Doctrine may produce Error and Superstition being infinitely more capable than either Truth or Religion to engage an abused people to Insurrections and disorders more nefarious Now the Jesuits as we have already seen maintain that this Infallibility of the Pope reaches even to the making their Sovereignty over Princes an Article of Faith It is of Faith say Bellarmine and Lessius that the Pope may depose Kings because Pope Gregory the VIIth has decided it and that the Decision of a Pope is a point of Faith It were to take away all humane Reason to hinder men from thus arguing and by consequent to sleep on the point of a Precipice to suffer the Doctrine of Infallibility to creep into a State from whence it is impossible but the other must needs spring For having once permitted the people to be seasoned with this Opinion and that they are but accustomed to receive all that Popes pretend in their Bulls as well concerning matters of Right as of Fact as if jesus Christ himself had pronounced it if a Pope please to apply the Infallibility acknowledged to be in him for the determining as they have frequently done that by virtue of the power which jesus Christ has given him to bind and lose whatsoever is on Earth he has power to depose Kings and absolve their Subjects from their Fidelity and that such a King merits to be deposed it is not to be thought 't will prove so easy a matter to defend one's self from these Fulminations by altering the minds of the people in a moment and persuading them that he whom they took to be then so infallible is now no such thing or is not at least in that matter that is to say that he is infallible when what he affirms does not concern us but ceases to be so when it imports us he should not be so This were to make an ill estimate of the minds of men and of the force which custom has over them to suffer one's self to be dazzled with these vain confidences Those Opinions which do by little and little establish their authority in the minds of men are weak and tender in their infancy and beginning nor is it then so difficult a matter to extirpate them but when once time has rooted and confirmed them they get dominion of Reason and discover a tyrannous look against which it dares not so much as lift up its eyes Capable they are to precipitate it into all manner of excess and make men violate the rules of very Nature and the most sacred obligations of civil Society especially when they happen to be Opinions which possess the spirit by the way of Religion For men being once persuaded and with reason that they ought to prefer Religion before their lives their goods and whatever else they enjoy if in that they chance to be prepossessed by an error of dangerous consequence to the Civil state they maintain and defend it to the utmost Nulla res multitudinem efficaciùs regit quam Superstitio The League the Guelphs and Gibelines are sanguinary examples of it so as there is not a more mistaken and wicked policy then that of those who minding only the present Age and their own interest suffer these Opinions to root themselves without considering that it is infinitely more easy to hinder their establishment then to stop their accursed effects when once they are confirmed The next Pretence is to make the world believe that there is no such great reason to apprehend even the Opinion itself of the Pope's Sovereignty over the Temporals of Kings because say they Popes can exercise in so few Instances that they seldom happen as in case a Prince fall into a formal Apostasy from the Faith and the Church to embrace a false Religion But 't is in vain these Author's endeavour to excuse this pernicious Doctrine by this false Colour since those whom they would defend loudly disavow them as not enduring that any should prescribe such narrow bounds to this Temporal Monarchy On the contrary there is nothing with these Divines so ordinary as the Occasions for which they give the Pope this right to depose Kings so as there is not one in Europe whom they may not justly depose according to their Maxims had they but as much power in effect as they conceive themselves to have in right Is there any thing more frequent than not to pursue the Pope's intentions in making War or Peace It suffices the Pope according to the Jesuits to dispossess a King whenever he shall conceive Peace or War necessary for Religion This is what Bellarmine teaches in express terms in his Book against Barclay cap. 19 And what says Barclay if the Emperor refuse to draw his sword at the command of the Pope or draw it against his will I answer says Bellarmine that if the Emperor will not draw his sword at the command of the Pope or draw it against his will and it shall be requisite for the Spiritual weal he shall force him to do it by the spiritual Sword that is by his Censures to draw the material Sword or to sheathe it again and if the Emperor be not concerned with these Censures he shall absolve his Subjects from their obedience the necessity of the Church so requiring and even take away his Empire from him 'T is thus he shall make him know that the Sword is subordinate to the Sword according to the Bull Unam sanctam and that they both belong to the Church though not after the same manner We see likewise in * Odorious Raynaldus tom 18 ad an 1458. num 36. Novum Legarum mittit ut si ad Pacem redintegrandam dissentientes inducere non posset propositâ anathematis poenâ illos ab armis juberet Pontificis nomine absistere ac finitimorum Regum arma conjungeret in eum qui jussis non pareret Raynaldus Continuator of Baronius a famous example of this manner of proceeding in Popes For he reports Anno 1458. n. 36. That Calixtus the IIIᵈ desiring to hinder the War 'twixt the King of Navarre and the Prince de Viana Heir of that Kingdom sent them a Legate with order if he could not reconcile them to Peace to dispose them as from the Pope to lay down their arms by menacing them with an Anathema and arming their neighbour Kings against him that should disobey Is not this to subject Kings in the noblest right of their Crowns which is to conclude Peace or War as themselves think fit Nor is there any thing more ordinary with the most Catholic Princes then to have Alliances with Princes either Heretics or Infidels The example of john d' Albret deposed from the Kingdom of Navarre by julius the IIᵈ declares again that this pretence is sufficient for a Pope to depose Kings since this King had not been sold but on pretence of an Alliance which he was accused to have contracted with Lewis the XIIth whom this Pope pretended to be a Schismatic because he was in war with him for Temporal interests 'T is a thing of no great consequence to molest a few Monks in the possession of their Privileges yet was that enough to depose a King and deprive him of his State For so it is that Bellarmine explicates the Privilege of S. Medard of Soissons falsly-attributed to S. Gregory and conceived in these terms If either King Prelate judge or other Person whatsoever shall violate these Decrees of our Authority Apostolical or but contradict disquiet or trouble the Friars or shall ordain any thing contrary hereunto let him be deprived of his Dignity of whatsoever quality he be separated from the Communion of the Faithful and condemned to eternal pains in the judgement of God Though there was never any thing more false than this Privilege as all knowing persons understood and albeit it had been true one might say that it only contained a menate of God's displeasure very frequent in those Ages and not a severe sentence of downright Deposition yet did this serve the Jesuits turn in favour of Popes to establish them a right of dispossessing Princes and judges upon like occasions and they extort this very interpretation from Gregory the VIIth who takes in the same sense certain expressions somewhat resembling them of this Saint concerning the Hospital of Autun The interpretation of the words of S. Gregory says Bellarmine de Potest Roman Pontif. in Temp. c. 40. is not mine but of another Gregory equal in Dignity and not much inferior for Sanctity For S. Gregory VIIth in his Epistle to the Bishop of Mets which is the 21 of the 8 Book citys this place of S. Gregory to show that the Emperor Henry was justly deposed S. Gregory says he declares that Kings are fallen from their dignity when they have the boldness to violate the Decrees of the Apostolical See writing in these terms to an Abbot named Senator Si quis verò Regum etc. So although one may and with great reason destroy that foundation which is alleged from S. Gregory yet one cannot do it against the testimony of Gregory the VIIth who was no whitless infallible than he if all Popes be infallible and by consequent it must be acknowledged that by the Doctrine of Infallibility Popes have right to pronounce Kings to be fallen from their Dignity as often as they molest Monks and Religious men in the enjoyment of the Privileges that have been given them by the holy See à fortiori therefore may it suffice to dispossess Chancellors Precedents Councillors and other Magistrates when they have given any judgement or sentence prejudicial to their Privileges But Innocent the IIIᵈ in the chapter Novit de judiciis has opened a door that leaves no considerable error of Princes for which the Pope may not depose them at least if they persist in them For he pretends that granting he had no right to meddle in Secular affairs yet he was to judge of all such wherein there might be any mixture of sin Ratione peccati cujus ad nos pertinet says this Pope sine dubitatione censura quam in quemlibet exercere possumus & debemus And as in all contests there is commonly some sin on the one side or the other especially when there is War there being none of either part just according to the Divines so by this means the Pope becomes sovereign Arbiter of all the Secular differences of Christian Princes Now menaces of Deposition and Privation of all Dignity always march with the judiciary Sentences of Popes against those who do not obey them and so unless Kings were impeccable or blindly resolved to obey whatever the Roman Court shall ordain them it is hard if they ever want a pretext to depose a King when they have a mind to undertake and have strength enough to execute it It must then be acknowledged that if once Infallibility be established the Pope will always find reasons enough to dispossess a Prince which if he do not put in practice it must be when he wants either will or power But were it reasonable that Kings who are established by God should suffer Maxims to be introduced according to which the acknowledgement of them for Kings by their subjects should depend upon the will of another Does not Christian Prudence and Policy oblige them to banish from their States all the seeds of Division and trouble and not only to consider the present but enlarge their vigilance for the time to come It is true that by the Grace of God he who now sits on S. Peter's Chair is so wise and moderate that we can expect from him nothing save actions of goodness and sweetness towards all Christian Princes but we have no assurance that it will always be so and the past examples show us sufficiently how easily things change at the Courts of Princes in a little time which changing so often their Princes change also their Interests with them I will only recite what I find recorded in the History of King Henry the Great so judiciously written by my Lord Bishop of Rhodes This Prelate remarks that the League which took birth from the time of Henry the IIIᵈ and which with reason he styles A powerful Faction which thought to introduce the Spanish dominion in France and which strove to subvert the order of the Succession of the Royal Family under the most specious pretence in the world viz. the maintenance of Religion would needs at first sustain itself by the authority of the holy See which they carried to Rome and presented to Pope Gregory the XIIIth to obtain his approbation but he never would consent to it but as long as he lived did altogether disavow it Had Henry the IIIᵈ any reason for all this to be confident that Rome would never join with these Factious persons who desired nothing more than to dethrone him themselves If he did believe it he was strangely abused For the same Bishop acknowledges that Gregory the XIIIth was no sooner dead but Sixtus Quintus who succeeded him approved of the League and fulminated terrible Bulls against the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde declaring them Heretics and Apostates etc. and as such obnoxious to the Censures of the Church and the pains denounced in the Canons deprived both them and their Descendants of all lands and dignities rendered them incapable to succeed in any Principality whatsoever especially that of the Kingdom of France absolving their Subjects from their Oath of Allegiance and forbidding them to obey them Notwithstanding this Prelate notes that Sixtus the Vth was shortly after displeased with the League and could never be brought to furnish any thing towards the expense of the War which plainly abortived the greatest part of their enterprises But Urban the VIIth holding the Seat but 13 days after Sixtus Gregory the XIVth succeeded him who being of a vehement spirit and by inclination a Spaniard ardently embraced the party of the League prodigiously lavishing the Treasures which Sixtus Quintus had amassed to levy an army of twelve thousand men which he put under command of Count Hercules Sfondrati his Nephew and accompanied it with a Monitory or Bull of Excommunication against the Prelates who followed Henry the Great which he sent by Marcellino Landriano his Nuntio with a world of money to be distributed to the Sixteen of Paris and amongst the Heads of the Cabals in every great City To which this Bishop adds That the Parliament of Tours that is to say that party of the Parliament of Paris which was at Tours having received intelligence of the Monitory caused it to be torn in pieces by the hand of the common Hangman and decreed seizure of body against the Nuntio and that on the contrary those of Paris annulled this Arrest as being given says he by people without authority ordaining that they should obey his Holiness and his Nuntio These Examples produced by a famous Bishop and one whom we cannot doubt to have been most affectionate to the holy See makes us judge that a Wise Politician will never neglect betimes to suppress these strange Opinions which both the Parliament and Sorbon have so often pronounced so pernicious to States as tending to the subversion of Sovereign Powers ordained and established by God and to the stirring up of Subjects against their Princes under pretext that the present state of the Court of Rome would appear very far from such like enterprises It belongs also to the wisdom of a King so illuminated as ours is and affectioned to the prosperity of this Kingdom not to confine his cares within such narrow limits as the present Age. His own so wonderful Birth and that of a Dauphin which God has so early blessed his Marriage with should make him hope that his Race which is that of S. Lewis shall reign to the end of the World over this great Monarchy 't is this which yet obliges him farther to extend the thoughts of his Royal providence beyond the bounds of common prudence to prevent the source of those evils which may possibly happen in the Ages long to come and to permit nothing which may one day shake a Throne upon which all his Descendants ought to sit hereafter And truly it were highly necessary that great Kings should labour for themselves and their Successors to establish their Authority since they have to do with the most crafty and able Politicians in the world who perpetually watch all occasions of more and more amplifying that of their Master who with infinite diligence manage the least occasions of advancing them who take for wellgrounded all that escapes and is let pass changing as soon Favours into Right who are not repulsed at every resistance which sometimes opposes their undertake but giving place for a while are by the next opportunity ready to make fresh assaults which often succeeds either by change of some Minister of State or the humour of our Nation whose vigour being but of a short continuance yields that with the greatest facility to day which she never resolved to agree to yesterday We have an Example of this in that possession which the Pope's Nuntios have gotten of receiving the Attestations of the Life and manners of those persons who are nominated by the King to Bishoprics and Abbeys The late Mons. du Puy has compiled a Treatise concerning this subject where he shows That by the Ordinance of Blois Anno 1576 by advice of the State's General convened at Paris 1615 and by the Assembly of the Notables Anno 1627. this information ought to be made by the Ordinaries as conformable to the Council of Trent Sess. 22. ch. 2. and Sess. 24. ch. 1. That notwithstanding those of Rome had always striven to put the Nuntios in possession of this Right That they had vainly attempted it when Henry the Great prosecuted his Absolution there That they had begun to usurp this possession during the late King's Minority and that by little and little they had reduced things to such a point as to oblige all those who were nominated to have recourse to them till in the year 1639. it happened that the Sieur Hugues de l' Aratut nominated to the Bishopric of comings making his Information before the Ordinary and the Pope refusing to admit him the late King of glorious memory resolved to oppose this violence and stop its course so as the affair having been sent to the Parliament there was an Arrest given the 12 of December 1639 by which 't was ordained That these informations concerning Life and manners should for the future be made by the Diocesan Bishops of the places and not by the Nuntios Notwithstanding the Nuntios have still continued to maintain their pretensions in despite of this Arrest nor is there a person of them that does yield obedience by his addressing to the Ordinary because those who are disposed to do it apprehend and not without reason lest their Bulls should be denied them Well known is that famous Arrest given Anno 1648. upon the Remonstrances of the late Advocate-general Mons. Talon against those who would have valid in France the Censures of the Inquisition and Index in the interim they were never more in reputation then since that time and it is hard to comprehend how the Clergy of France which has ever been so generous could endure it without once complaining that the Episcopal Decrees of the Prelates of France have been treated by the Inquisitors of Rome with so much indignity that they have ranged them amongst the damned Books which they esteem so disgraceful without vouchsafing either to clear it with the Bishops before Censure or to render them any account of what they found amiss therein afterwards See but how they bear all things before them with a perseverance indefatigable and by degrees how the pretences of the Roman Court which have formerly been so odious among us establish themselves in the Kingdom and the ancient Maxims that our Fathers have conserved with so much zeal and jealousy are changed and come to nothing 'T is not always done at once but sometimes by degrees and insensibly and to give an Instance of it we need go no farther than to that of the Infallibility of the Pope only 'T is certain that in the time of the Councils of Constance and of Basil they acknowledged no other Infallibility in the Church then that of the Church Universal and the General Council which represented it and that it went for current among all learned men that the Pope might err in point of Faith It is what may be seen not only in the Works of the greatest persons of those times as of Gerson Peter d' Ailly Cardinal of Cambray the holy and knowing Carthusian Dionysius Rikel Cardinal Cusa the Abbot of Palermo the Cardinal of Florence john Patriarch of Antioch Alphonsus Tostatus surnamed the Prodigy of the world johannes de Parifiis and of many more but likewise by the contest which sprung up in those times Whither a Council were above a Pope or the Pope above the Council which was decided in favour of the Council by the Fathers of the Council of Constance and Basil who maintaining the Preeminence of the Council made use of this Principle as certain and indisputable That a General Council could not err in Determinations which regard Faith and good Manners and that the Pope therein might err So the Council of Basil minding to establish this Preeminence of Ecumenical Councils in its Synodal Letter published after the third Session speaks in this manner This holy Church has received so great a Privilege of Jesus Christ our Saviour which he has founded by his Blood that we most firmly believe she cannot err This is what is agreeable to God alone by nature and to the Church by privilege Nor was this gift imparted to the Sovereign Bishop of some of whom we read that they fell into Heresy 'T is the Church alone which is without spot or wrinkle which cannot err in things necessary to Salvation And afterwards If the Council might err it being certain that Popes may err all the whole Church would be in an Error Si errare posset Concilium cum certum sit Papam errare posse tota erraret Ecclesia See the Voice of the whole Church legitimately assembled by the H. Spirit in General Council For 't is not to be doubted but that then the Council of Basil was Ecumenical since Pope Eugenius the IVth acknowledged by an Authentic Bull recited in the 16 Session that the Council was legitimate and General from the beginning of it to that very moment But what clearly testifies that no body in those times doubted of the preeminence of a Council above a Pope in things concerning Faith which cannot be established but on this of the Council's not erring and that the Pope may is what Pope Eugenius what time he chiefly strove to set himself above a Council was notwithstanding obliged to acknowledge That in matters of Faith the opinion of the Council ought to be preferred before that of a Pope This we see in the last of the 3 Bulls which he revoked when he rejoined himself to the Council 1434. in these terms Suppose a Pope or his Legate would do one thing and that a Council would do the contrary we ought to follow not the Sentence of the Council but the opinion of the Pope or his Legate who represents him because the Pope 's jurisdiction is above that of all Councils unless it happen that the things in controversy concerned the Catholic Faith or that they were such as without the determination thereof the whole State of the Universal Church would be in disorder In such a case there must be had more regard to the opinion of a Council then to that of Popes Nisi fortè quae statuenda forent Catholicam Fidem respicerent vel si non fierent statum universalis Ecclesiae principaliter perturbarent quia tunc Concilii Sententia esset potius attendenda This Pope you see acknowledged that in things concerning the Catholic Faith the Pope being of one opinion and the Council of another that of the Council was to be chosen Now this were ridiculous if the Pope were Infallible in Decisions touching Faith since there is no opinion which we ought to prefer before a man that is Infallible And therefore Pope Eugenius  he pretended to place himself above all Councils durst never arrogate that of Infallibility Dionysius Rikel Carthusian termed the Extatick or Illuminated Doctor as having through all his Works joined an illuminated and inflamed Piety with his profound skill in Divinity in his Treatise of the Authority of the Pope and Councils having in several passages spoken highly of that of the Pope does notwithstanding acknowledge that in Council one cannot dispute the having this advantage above the Pope That a Council cannot err in matters which pertain to Faith and good manners and that the Pope may err there The power of a Council says he is in this greater than the Pope's that jesus Christ has promised to his Church or the Council which is her Representative an infallible direction and divine assistance which shall never fail So as a Council can neither err in matters of Faith nor in what regards good manners forasmuch as it is immediately led by the Holy Spirit in the Determination of these things And therefore the Pope himself is in these things to adhere to the Church's Determination that is to the Decrees of the Council as to an Oracle and regulation of the Holy Ghost whereas the Pope being obnoxious to err in points of Faith good manners and other matters necessary to Salvation methinks men should not acquiesce in his judgement as the only certain opinion because he is not an infallible rule nor yet a foundation so established but that it may deviate from the Truth This holy Monk says the same thing in a Sermon upon S. Hilary and excepting only those Authors who are notoriously engaged in the Interests of the Roman Court all the knowing Divines of that Age spoke the same Language I observe only Pope Adrian the VIth who having taught the same Doctrine before he was exalted to the Pontificate did not only not retract it afterwards but caused his Works to be printed at Rome in which we may yet read these words namely in his fourth Book of Sentences If by the Roman Church says he you understand him who is the Head of it 't is certain pray mark the term that this Head of the Roman Church viz. the Pope may err even in things appertaining to Faith by defending an Heresy by his Determination or Decretal Si per Ecclesiam Romanam intelligatur Caput ejus certum est quòd possit errare etiam in iis quae tangunt Fidem Haeresin per suam Determinationem aut Decretalem asserendo See what this holy and knowing man has written being then a private person and what it was he so approved when he was Pope so little did his Advancement blind him as it has done many others or make him forget what he owed to Truth to gratify his new Dignity with advantages which he believed jesus Christ never imparted to him It is not here necessary to allege the Parisian Doctors opinions so well known to the World and to the Jesuits themselves who term the opinion against Infallibility Sententia Parisiensium but we must not omit the sense of the whole Faculty in a Body in this celebrious Declaration of the Faith which she made by order of Francis the Ist and which was afterwards verified in Parliament so as in France it held a particular force of a Law and a public Ordinance Having therefore received a command of the King to reduce into Articles the principal Points of Faith attacked by Heretics she declares That General Councils cannot err in Points of Faith and regulation of good manners Certum est Concilium Generale legitimè congregatum universalem Ecclesiam repraesentans in Fide & morum determinationibus errare non posse But for the Pope see what she says of it all It is no less certain that there is one Sovereign Bishop by divine right in the Militant Church to which all Christians ought to submit and who has likewise power to confer Indulgences Nec minùs certum est unum esse jure Divino Pontificem in Ecclesia Militante cui omnes Christiani parere tenentur qui quidem potestatem habet Indulgentias conferendi This different manner of speaking of Councils and the Pope in two Articles which immediately follow attributing Infallibility to the Council and none to the Pope sufficiently states the different sentiments which these Doctors had both of Councils and Popes upon this subject For I think not myself obliged to refute the extravagancies of a certain Writer of these times who pretends to prove by the Obedience which these Doctors teach is due to the Pope as if by that we acknowledged his Infallibility By the same argument he may prove that not only all Bishops in particular but that all Abbots and Abbesses Priors & Prioresses are infallible because they are promised obedience But he should have learned that in promising obedience to the Pope men are so far from acknowledging an entire submission of belief to his Decisions that the Divines say expressly and amongst others Mons. Duval Summo Pontifici parendum esse sive errare possit sive non Which signifies but this That men should not Dogmatise the contrary to what he has decided and with this caution yet nisi Error sit intolerabilis as Gerson affirms Such as has been the common sentiment of our Parisian Divines till Mons. Duval who would have introduced Opinions into the Sorbon totally repugnant to these ancient Maxims But as 't is customary with those who engage in quarrels against what is universally received it has hitherto been with much wariness Duvallius de supr. aut Rom. Pontif. l. 2. c. 1. For he did in that manner assert the Pope to be infallible in matter of Faith that in the same breath he likewise taught 't was no matter of Faith to believe it Non est de fide Summum Pontificem esse infallibilem He holds moreover that the Opinion of his not being infallible is neither rash nor erroneous Non est erroneum neque temerarium temeritate opinionis dicere Summum Pontificem in decernendo errare posse And speaking concerning the Decision of a Pope against a Doctor of Paris he says That this Definition of Sixtus the IVth is not of Faith but only very certain because says he the Definitions of the Sovereign Bishops have not the certitude of the Catholic Faith till they be first received by the Universal Church or a General Council And thus whatever the Doctor 's design be and those of his gang to advance the Authority of the Pope they have been yet obliged to acknowledge that a Divine who should doubt or not believe what has not been decided but by a Pope should neither be accused of Error or Temerity provided he did not contradict the Pope publicly and with Scandal Behold here the very first breach which has been made at least in the Sorbon against its ancient Doctrine But in the mean time this has not hindered those very Persons who encouraged this Doctor and that were engaged by Interest with the Court of Rome to reject this personal Infallibility of the Pope whenever they had any regard of their reputation amongst learned men This is evident by Cardinal Perron who in his Reply to the King of Great Britain l. 6. p. 1083. expressly acknowledges that the only expedient to determine Disputes of Religion with a certainty of Faith is by a General Council Were the Service says he taken away from the Original Tongue and transferred into another all means of celebrating universal Councils and having any certitude or assurance of matters of Faith would cease For there being no certitude of the genuine sense of Scripture by our particular Interpretation since no Interpretation of Scripture is of private inspiration and we having no way left us of resolution with certitude of Faith in debates which rise about Religion upon the meaning of Scripture besides the voice of the Church speaking in General Councils evident it is that whatever it be which takes away from the Church the means of holding General Councils takes away from it all means of deciding the Disputes of Christian Religion with certitude of Faith Cardinal de Richelieu in his Book of Controversies which has been approved by the late Mons. Lescot Bishop of Chartres and divers other Divines exceedingly devoted to the Court of Rome acknowledges the same thing Lib. 3. c. 5. p. 424. Since there is says he no Ecumenical Council which enjoins the use of the Images of the Divine Persons it is evident that 't is no Article of Faith supposing that for the Principle That only General Councils can frame Articles of Faith Thus we see that the Doctrine of Infallibility which had been promoted by Mons. Duval with some kind of fear and reserve was abandoned by the most knowing persons of the Church and chiefly by those who defended it against the Heretics because they would not engage the cause of the Catholic Religion in defence of an Opinion so insupportable and therefore the Favourites of the Roman Court were then contented that this Opinion should pass for problematick only Whence it came to pass that Mons. Duval who had but just proposed it in this manner was all his life in so great esteem at Rome that he was looked upon there as the person in the world who had rendered the greatest services to the holy See and that all the Nuns had order not to do any thing here without his advice But finding this tentative succeed so happily and that the Jesuits having gained the Catholic Universities had filled all men's thoughts with this infinite power of the Pope which was highly advantageous to them for the withdrawing of them from the Jurisdiction of the Bishops they no longer remained in this moderation They pretended that it was not enough for the French to permit them to say the Pope was infallible but so ordered the matter that no man was suffered to acknowledge him for less They were contented that Mons. Duval should say that it was no matter of Faith to believe the Pope infallible because this reserve was necessary at that point of time for the currenter passage of the Doctrine but having first begun to distribute it in this manner they did not long rest there the design is to make men believe that the Doctrine of the Faculty of Paris opposite to this Infallibility which in Mons. Duval's days was neither an Error nor any rash Opinion is since that time though the Church never thought of any change become a manifest Heresy This is what the Jesuits have exceedingly farthered For 't is about 5 or 6 years past that Father Theophile Raynaud a jesuit of Lions published a Book with this Title Ipse dixit to show not only that the Pope is infallible but that it is matter of Faith that he is so and by consequent those that doubt of it Heretics and he treats Mons. Duval very ill in his Book whom in contempt he calls a certain Doctor for his caution in not so openly venting this false Doctrine as a new Article of Faith And because they saw this enterprise of theirs was not punished as it deserved growing daily more insolent they proceeded to that extravagant impiety of their Theses of the College de Clermont which is now the object of the indignation of all France daring publicly to maintain even in the midst of Paris itself and in face of the Parliament That the Catholic Truth which opposes the Heresy of the Greeks concerning the Pope's Primacy is That Jesus Christ has given to all Pope's the very same Infallibility which himself had not only in Questions de Jure but in those also the Facto By this 't is visible to what their boldness may aspire if not timely prevented and repressed and what progress these monstrous Opinions are like to make to the total destruction of the Liberties of the Gallican Church so precious to our Ancestors unless we be more vigilant in stopping its career And in earnest it is very hard it should not be so if we but consider a little those three Expedients which the abettors of the Court of Rome make use of to establish their Maxims The First is the Company of Jesuits spread over the face of the Universe and got to be Masters of the greatest part of the Colleges so as all the World being imbued with these Principles from their infancy as 't were Opinions not advantageous to the Church but the Court Politic of Rome they are received with respect as if they constituted a part of our Religion so as it is quite against the hair of any other because the Jesuits accustom those who have once placed their belief in them to look upon men as persons suspected of their Faith who in this are not of their opinion There is the hands of many persons a Treatise of the late Father Eustachius Gault a very knowing and pious Father de l' Oratoire nominated by the late King for Bishop of Marseilles wherein he mentions how dangerous it is for this very reason lest all the Colleges should in time and by degrees fall into the hands of the Jesuits The Second means is the care they take concerning Books blasting all that they find containing any thing of the ancient Maxims of the School of Paris suppressing them all that they can or at least so ordering the matter as to retrench whatever is not in their favour as they have done by a large Discourse of Guicciardin treating of the politic Encroachment of the Court of Rome which is no more to be found in the late Italian Editions but conserved in the old ones as may yet be seen in an ancient French Translation of that famous Historian In the mean while they give all manner of liberty to such Books as maintain their own pretensions and that establish the Opinions on which they are supported It must be acknowledged that there 's nothing has more advanced their Interest for 't is almost impossible but the minds and spirits of Students should be filled with the sentiments of those Authors which they read most Now without speaking of the less considerable Authors who are infinite those who would more deeply apply themselves to the Ecclesiastical Science do commonly addict themselves to Church-History and the Councils and for the first they go to seek it in Baronius and his Continuators This person had doubtless very many excellent qualities and deserves great commendations for having by his indefatigable labour disintangled an infinite many of things which before lay in a strange confusion But withal it must not be denied that the Zeal which transported him for the Grandeur of the H. See made him commit very many excesses which might be pardoned in a person so commendable on some other occasions but by no means be defended For how can we possibly excuse him all those fabulous imaginations of his where he engages himself to make the world believe that Pope Honorius was never condemned by the 6th Council but that what we see of his Condemnation in the Acts of that Council has been maliciously inserted by the order of a most pious Emperor whom he affirms to have consented to the Falsification of the Originals which he had in his hands And yet for all this because F. Cambefis a very learned Dominican thought himself obliged for the honour of Truth and of the Church to refute this Fiction which is of most pernicious consequence since there is not an Act of General Council which one may not with as much likelihood say to be forged it has pleased F. Theophile Raynaud a jesuit forsooth in a Book entitled An Cyriaci immunes à Censura a most bloody Satire against the whole Dominican Order most outrageously to rend and tear this learned Friar as if he had perpetrated the heinousest sin in the world for having shown that Baronius engaged himself into very great Absurdities in not acknowledging that a Pope had been condemned as an Heretic in a General Council A strange piece of tyranny it would be to take away all liberty from Divines that love the Truth to defend it against whomsoever when 't is thus wronged and to interpret it a Crime to take notice of the excesses of Baronius when he endeavours to advance the Authority of the Holy See He is not then himself and he sometimes says such things seriously on this subject that 't is hard to reconcile them to sense as when he attributes a kind of Infallibility to the Pope which is not well applicable to God himself viz. that the Pope can make new Articles of Faith and change them again when they are made Ut planè appareat says he on the business of the Apollinarists An. 373. n. 22. ex arbitrio pependisse Romani Pontificis Decreta sancire & sancita mutare This is prodigiously strange and yet we find something like this of Baronius in the Preface of F. Sirmondus upon Facundus For says he this Bishop is not to be blamed for having maintained the three Chapters since Pope Vigilius was ever more disposed to defend them as it was in truth reasonable says the jesuit * Sirmondus Lectori Nec verò fraudi esse posse Facundo trium Capitulorum causam quam defendit in qua si verum loqui placet honestius fuerat cum Vigilio cadere quam vincere cum jusiiniano Quòd si Vigilium perpetuò ducem sequi maluisset quam Vigilium postquam Iustiniano cedendum fuit cum Afris suis reprehendere nemo illum de suscepta Capitulorum defenfione ad quam Vigilius ipse ultro postea rediit jure accusandum judicaret And afterwards Usus est Vigilius libertate quam causa concedebat semper alioquin ad defendenda ut par erat & probanda Capitula propensior Vigilius ad defendenda ut par erat & probanda Capitula propensior Save only that he was not blamable but for blindly adhering to Pope Vigilius in changing his opinion as often as it pleased the Pope to change defending the three Chapters when this Pope defended them and condemning them when the Pope condemned them undertaking to maintain when the Pope undertook it After this guise it is F. Sirmond quatenus jesuit would have us conform our Conscience to the Will of the Pope without troubling ourselves with the truth of the thing But I say quatenus jesuit for as F. Sirmond 't is well known to all his Friends that there are few Divines who have less believed this blind Obedience then himself But to return to Baronius It must be acknowledged that his Annals being in other places filled with many very good things for the confirmation of Catholic Verities and the purity of Discipline contain also very many pernicious Maxims and false Reflections as to what concerns the pretences of the Court of Rome and 't is that which makes these last to be received and swallowed because they are mingled with the first The Continuators follow all of them the same spirit and do but tread in his steps but without coming near him in that which he did well they infinitely surpass him in what he did ill This is truth especially of the last and most ample which is Raynaldus There can be nothing more weak of one part or more insolent on the other and 't is a shame to the Church that a Writer so little able should presume to compile its History He is a man without discernment without the spirit of an Ecclesiastic without style without judgement without sincerity without credit and who delivers with an insupportable boldness and as if they were forsooth so many Articles of Faith the most indefensible pretensions of the Court of Rome who alleges Authors the most partial and least worthy of credit such as Poggius Blondus Turrecremata and the like as the most authentic Testimonies and after whom one were obliged to condemn the honestest men and those whose sanctity it has pleased God to make known even by their Miracles as the Cardinal d' Arles in fine who upon all occasions where he wants proofs overflows with injuries and outrageous declamations unworthy an Historian who should never be transported with passion For all this he has had the boldness to dedicate his eighteenth Tome containing the History of Five Popes and two Councils viz. that of Basil and Florence to the French Clergy and 't is easily seen by his Epistle that his design was only to engage the Church of France by the glozing Eulogies he gives it for its steady obedience to the Holy See to approve or at least dissemble all that his Tome contains advantages for the interests of the Roman Court and prejudicial to the Liberties of the Gallican Church But the design did not altogether succeed for having made an offer of his Book to the Assembly of the Clergy 1660 thereby to obtain some Letter of Thanks and so in time to make it pass for an Approbation of his Book through all the French Churches the Bishop to whom 't was referred found the Book so repugnant to our Liberties that he would do nothing in it and with this repulse was his unworthy Present repaid But the Abettors of the Court of Rome believe with great reason that they have however gained a main Point that there has been nothing positively done against a Work presented to the whole Clergy Where the * Ad an 1423. n. 8. and in the Table Verbo Constantiense Concilium Doctrine of the authority of a Council above a Pope which is the prime foundation of the Liberties of the Gallican Church and the first Article of the Pragmatic Sanction is  styled Heretical and Schismatical though it has been decided for a Catholic Truth by no less than two General Councils Where the (a) Ad an 1432. n. 9.12 & add an 1433. n. 9 etc. Council of Basil so revered of all France is rend and torn the most outrageously in the world and that in a time when Popes have declared it for Ecumenical Where a (b) In his Letter to the Clergy trifling Scribbler imperiously presumes to decide a difference upon which the Church would never yet pronounce making those to pass for Anti-popes' who possessed the Seat in Avignon during the Schism who are yet the only ones which France has acknowledged though God himself seems to have been willing that this Question should have remained undecided since he has permitted very holy Persons to maintain the parties of both these Popes Saint Catharine that of Urban and S. Peter of Luxemburg that of Clement from whom he received even his Cardinal's Hat as S. Vincent Ferrier who also adhered to the Avignon Popes (c) Ad an 1440. n. 4. Where by an abominable Lie they impute to Charles the Seventh that he knew the Gallican Church had made a detestable Schism by pronouncing an impious Sentence in behalf of Clement the VIIth against Urban the VIth (a) Ad an 1438. n. 14 Where the Pragmatical Sanction which was contrived at Bourges following the Decrees of the Council of Basil by the French Bishops which King Charles the VIIth had assembled there with the Princes Lords and great Persons of the Kingdom of all degrees and qualities is unworthily styled the Opprobrium of the King because it declares the Pope inferior to a Council many ways limits his power and re-establisheth Canonical Elections (b) Ad an 1436. n. 4. & add an 1439. n. 40 & add an 1440. n. 2. Where the Mandate de Providendo Expectative graces Reservations Regresses and other like Abuses so justly condemned by the Council of Basil and by the whole French Church are maintained as legitimate Rights from this strange pretence of a Bull of Eugenius the IVth That the Church of Rome does what she pleases with all Church-Dignities without wrong to any man because she may allege this word of the Holy Gospel Friend I do thee no wrong is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own and that the same Pope writing to Alphonsus' King of Portugal says That the free disposition of all Churches appertains to the Apostolical See and that the Pope's dispose of them as best they like to which even Kings and Princes submit themselves (a) Ad an 1436. n. 10 & add an 1439. n. 37 Where the most Sacred Canons of the Church are so subdued to the Pope's will that he makes a Pope writing to a King of France to say That 't is a ridiculous thing to allege them to him or demand of him their observation as if he knew nothing of them whereas if he acted against the Canons we are not to believe that 't was done out of ignorance but because it pleases him to have it so That he is so far Master that according to his pleasure he might not only interpret suspend and mitigate them but alter and abolish them likewise as pleased his fancy The whole Book is stuffed with like excesses and greater than these too notwithstanding the fautors of these pernieious Opinions have this advantage that no body having complained of them they will one day take this silence for a tacit Approbation beside the gain which they receive when they who would be learned in the Church-History studying it in these Books shall at the same time suck in all these dangerous Maxims Nor have they less perverted the other source of Ecclesiastical Science to wit the study of the Councils The last Collector of them Binnius being but a small Copier of Baronius Bellarmine and Suarez who has stuffed his Notes with all that he thought proper to inspire these new Opinions And what is altogether prodigious is that whereas the King of Spain has never permitted that any man should print in his Dominions any passage of Baronius' Annals prejudicial to his pretences they have in the Lovure itself printed the Collection of the Councils of Binnius and that the Jesuits who have ever had all the government of this Royal Press have left there in the life of Boniface the VIIIth these outrageous words against all France Philippum pulchrum Galliae Regem justè excommunicavit This Pope did justly excommunicate Philip the Fair King of France As much as to say that all France was Schismatical in that Age for opposing as she did the Excommunication as judging it very unjust and appealing to the future Council and that she yet continues so for having never since changed her opinion You see in the mean time what the Jesuits think fit to print in the King's house under his own nose and at his charges that so they may give the Enemies of France the advantage to reproach her for owning in this period the justice of an Excommunication of one of her Kings against which she has heretofore so vigorously opposed herself The Abridgement of the Councils by Coriolanus printed at Paris and revised by a Doctor of the Faculty is yet in some sort worse all the contrary Maxims to the Liberty of the Gallican Church being set at the Head of the Book as if they were so many Catholic Opinions Nor is there any thing better to be hoped for from that new Edition of the Councils which they are undertaking now at Paris if the Jesuits continue Masters seeing we find well enough by the Plan which Father L' Abbé has caused to be printed that besides all Binnius' Notes if any thing be added it shall be rather more and more to ruin the Liberties of the Gallican Church then to defend them and in effect we see that whereas in Binnius the Council of Basil is called Concilium Oecumenicum ex parte reprobatum a General Council in part reproved Father L' Abbé in his new project totally suppresses this quality of Oecumenick by simply calling it Basileense Concilium though he be exceedingly exact in giving the title of Oecumenick to all the other General Councils and even to those also which as yet France has never acknowledged for such as that of Florence for instance which he styles Florentinum Oecumenicum sive Universal Concilium and that of Lateran under julius the IIᵈ and Leo the Xth which he calls Lateranense quintum Oecumenicum seu Universale decimumseptimum You see how little they respect the judgement of the Gallican Church degrading the Councils which our Ancestors have ever had in such singular veneration as that of Basil and magnifying those which our Fathers would never receive for Ecumenical as that of Florence concerning which the Cardinal of Lorraine writ to Pope Pius the Vth In the Collection of the Memoires and Acts of the Council of Trent published by Mons. du Puy That in France 't was never received for Legitimate or General and that all the French would sooner die then affirm the contrary Much more that of Lateran which Bellarmine himself durst not assert Ecumenical as not composed but of a few Italian Bishops who had no other mark but the ruin of our Canonical Elections and against which the French have always protested as 't is to be seen by the History of the Concordate de Mons. du Puy and in effect the Council of Constance having decided that a Council is superior to a Pope and the Council of Lateran the contrary one of the two must necessarily be in an Error and by consequent one of the two is not Oecumenick and so all the world avowing and the Jesuits themselves that the Council of Constance was General Father L' Abbé calling it Constantiense Concilium Oecumenicum decimum-sextum that of Lateran which is repugnant to it in a certain Decision concerning Faith has not been so But be it what it will we may judge from hence that the Jesuits design is in this new Edition of the Councils to favour the pretences of the Court of Rome in all that possibly they can there being nothing she so much desires as to hinder the Council of Basil from being reputed General insomuch as those of the party have presumed to falsify a List of the General Councils at the beginning of the Epitome of Augustinus' Canon Law leaving out that of Basil which this learned Archbishop had set down as may be seen where after these words Constantiense sub Martino V there is in these falsified Editions Florentinum sub eodem which is ridiculous that of Florence not having been held under Martin the Vth but it sufficiently shows what there was in the uncorrupted Copies after that of Constance Basileense sub Eugenio IV and then Florentinum sub eodem There are a world of other things in this draught of Father L' Abbé which ought not to be suffered in France but above all 't is a thing insupportable that these Disciples of Santarel should dare to treat as Heretics and persons suspected for their Faith both Priests and Divines better Catholics then themselves for defending only the Sovereignty of Kings established by God against those who would subject them to the Spiritual power Thus this jesuit injures Roger Widdrington an English Priest whom we may believe a very firm Catholic since some temporal Interests might have else been able to make him quit his Religion had he not held it by a divine obligation But because he had several contestations with Bellarmine in favour of Kings L' Abbé is pleased to rank him in the same design with Blondel and to speak of him in these terms Non ignoro Davidem Blondellum Rogerum Widdringtonum & quosdam alios aut Haereticos aut de Fide saltem suspectos etc. The Third means which the Court of Rome makes use of to establish her Pretensions is to defend and gratify all those who favour her and to decry yea persecute upon all occasions those that are any ways averse and contrary 'T is so meritorious an action in their judgement to maintain that which they call the Rights of the Holy See that even those whom otherwise they have no esteem of for any sense of Piety become recommendable and 't is on the other side so great a sin to prescribe Canons for a limit of this infinite power that whatever Virtue or Piety one might be acknowledged to have had before he becomes wicked and Heretical upon an instant I find two memorable examples of both in the 18 Tome of Raynaldus The one is of Laurentius Valla whom he affirms in a certain place to have been an impious fellow and whom in another place he extols for having exceedingly praised Eugenius the IVth who is one of those Popes that endeavoured to advance his Authority to the utmost The other is of an Archbishop of Mentz a person of great worth and Piety that had some contest with Calixtus the IIIᵈ touching Canonical Elections This Archbishop complains that the Pope did not observe the Concordate which Eugenius the IVth and Nicolas the Vth his Successor had made on this subject with the Princes of Germany and Aeneas Silvius who was then Cardinal and who writ about it to this Archbishop's Chancellor was not able to deny it since what he says is that if the Elections were Canonical they ought to be confirmed in virtue of the Concordate and that they were not to be rejected unless says he the Pope in Council with his Brethren the Cardinals conceive it fit to put in a Person more advantageous to the Church as if this last Clause were not a visible infraction of the Concordate which this Archbishop had great reason to complain of since the right of Elections had no more any thing solid if the Pope refusing to confirm them had been acquitted by saying he only did it to constitute a more fitting person for the Church in place Be it  't is certain this Contestation concerned one only Point of Church-Discipline and another in which the Pope was visibly in the wrong See yet what Raynaldus teaches us Anno 1457. n. 49. That Pope Calixtus the IIIᵈ wrote to this Archbishop of Mentz upon the complaint he made of the nonobservance of the Concordate touching Elections * In mentem nostram cadere non potest te contra Autoritatem S. R. E. Sedis Apostolicae atque nostrae aliquid perpetrare cum te sciamus Pastorem scientificum & prudentem & Dei timoratum quae sunt contraria offendentibus Autoritatem & potestatem S. R. E. & summi Pontificis cum quicumque hoc attentare volens nedum in poenas à jure divino & humano institutas inciderit sed etiam crimen Haeresis atrociter committeret I cannot conceive that you should do any thing against the Authority of the Sacred Roman Church and Apostolical See knowing you to be a learned and prudent Pastor and one that fears God which are contrary to those who offend the Authority and Power of the Holy Church of Rome and of the Sovereign Bishop since whoever presumes to commit this attempt incurs not only the pains ordained by Divine and humane right but does also commit the most heinous crime of Heresy Thus a man becomes an Heretic and as he says a wicked Heretic how knowing prudent or fearing God soever he be if he opposes the Pope in any thing which does purely concern the Discipline of the Church whatever reason he may have so to do Those of Rome have always pursued the same course and Bellarmine though one of the most moderate of them forbears not to speak most outrageously against those who defend the Sovereignty of Kings and to treat them as Calvinists Pagans Publicans and Parasites of Kings to the loss of the Kingdom eternal under pretence of conserving to them their Dignity which is temporal Alexander Carrerius de potest Rom. Pont. Abeant moderni illi infipientésque Politici qui invidia & ambitione jus Statûs ad jus Pilati referunt de quibus Sancti Dei ità prophetârunt Astiterunt Reges terrae & Principes convenerunt in unum adversus Dominum & adversus Christum ejus And an Italian Author who styles them in the Title of his Book impios politicos addresses these words to them at the conclusion of his Book Away then with these modern insipid Politicians who led with envy and ambition would derive the Authority of States from that of Pilate and of whom those Saints of God have thus prophesied The Kings of the Earth and the Princes are met together against the Lord and against his Anointed That is to say The Pope is jesus Christ and all Christian Kings who maintain their Sovereignty against the Usurpations of Rome are the Herod's and the Pontius pilate's This public decry yet in the Books of these Writers is nothing so considerable as the particular and clandestine traverses that the Court of Rome excites upon all occasions whatsoever against those whom she believes not favourable to her Interests By that it is she stops the mouths and stays the Pens of almost all Learned persons who cannot really possess themselves of that Title that they are not inwardly persuaded of the Hypocrisies of these ambitious pretensions but they choose rather to be silent then to speak of it Because there are but a very few persons so in love with Truth as in resolving to maintain it will endure to be tormented and barretted all their life-time and to be torn in pieces when they are dead They see that Kings and their great Ministers take not for the most part that care to protect those who maintain and defend their Right by some testimony of their acknowledging it as the Court of Rome does to persecute them or at least to deny them all kind of favour They must be touched with an extraordinary Zeal and very disinteressed to surmount all these considerations and to sacrifice themselves for the Interest of their Prince and Country without any hope of advantage or to speak more properly with reason to apprehend all sort of disadvantage by it All those principally who are tied to any Community are thereby obliged to a silence which they believe to be just as holding themselves responsable for the conservation of their Body And 't is true these vast Bodies have stricter bonds which tie them to Rome and are more exposed to Persecution because they have more places which expose them to seizure to which one may add that almost all the Religious and Communities have their General's resident at Rome who will never permit that the Divines of their Orders should undertake to teach things which would not be well received there and from which there may lie a grudge against the whole Order They are therefore Private persons only who are fit upon these encounters to engage for the Truth but than it is necessary that they be furnished with Light to know it with Zeal to love it with Steadiness not to fear the ills it may produce and with Sincerity and Disinterest that so they may have no occasion to be in danger of being thwarted And when there were only this last how rare a thing it is to be found Well therefore has john Major that renowned Doctor of Paris long since observed That it was not to be wondered at if they were fewer who declared for a Council then for the Pope since Councils met but seldom and gave no Benefices whereas the Pope does and thence 't is says he men flatter him with an omnipotent power as well in Spiritual things as temporal Hinc homines ei blandiuntur dicentes quòd solvere potest omnia quadrare rotundata & rotundare quadrata tam in Spiritualibus quam in temporalibus Hence it proceeds that the Liberties of the Gallican Church and the ancient Maxims of the Sorbon are nowadays hardly vindicated but by secular persons such as We that have less relation to the Court of Rome then ecclesiastics have whereof the wisest of them are rather satisfied to approve them in their heart without defending them in their Books such power have fear and interest upon the spirit of those who should be more free from them by the Sanctity of their Profession But if there be persons disinterested so as not to be touched by these temporal considerations it often falls out that having little judgement and less science their Piety itself engages them into these new Opinions because they are published in the World under this artificial veil That 't is forsooth to violate and wound Religion to contest the Pope's Infallibility and temporal Sovereignty over Kings Those in the mean time who have no relation to it but this pretext without any mixture of humane interest may easily be disabused if once they but consider that the most pious of all our ancient Doctors as the illustrious Gerson wihtout mentioning Dionysius the Carthusian and the blessed Cardinal d' Arles have opposed with greater vigour those ambitious pretences of the Court of Rome and that they have judged that on the contrary 't is the sincere Zeal for the Catholic Religion which ought to oblige all judicious Divines courageously to resist this temporal Superiority over Kings and Infallibility as two inseparable Maxims one from the other either of them capable to raise very great mischiefs to the Church For in effect what is there more opposite to the real benefit of the Catholic Religion then this Doctrine of the Pope's Superiority over Kings in Temporals which is a necessary consequence of Infallibility and of the power which they give him to depose them Is not this to render Religion abhorred and suspected of all Princes as the Sorbon has judiciously remarked in the Censure of Santarel to give them cause to believe that 't is impossible they should have Subjects at the same time good Catholics and faithful to their King What Infidel Prince indeed would permit men to preach Faith in the Countries under his obedience if he knew that all those who embrace it think themselves by that dispensed with for obedience to him farther than another Sovereign pleases who can at any time cause them to take up arms against their lawful King Were this for example a proper expedient to incline the Americans to receive our Faith to say to them as some Spaniards did that the Pope had bestowed their Country on the King of Castille And however Barbarians as they were had they not reason to reply as they did That they knew no such thing as a Pope but that if there were he must needs be a wicked man to give away that which was none of his own Were not this also to dispose Heretical Princes not to suffer Catholics in their States when they shall behold them but as so many subjects to another Prince who has power to command them to depose him in the Country where they live And do not we know that 't is this has so imbittered the King of England against the Papists and the almost sole cause of the disturbance which they suffered in James' time as being to this day the greatest obstacle to the progress of Religion in that Kingdom In fine what Catholic Prince would be willing that his Dominion which he takes so much pains to preserve both in Peace and War should continually depend upon the judgement of one sole Person who may be possessed perhaps by his Enemies or transported by his proper passions For 't is a weak confidence to resolve they will give the Pope no occasion to Excommunicate or deprive them of their Kingdoms What occasion had jean d' Albret given that for all this was despoiled of his Estate Really one cannot offer a greater injury either to the Church or Pope himself than this attributing of so odious a power to him And the Church will have reason to say to these preposterous defenders of her Interests as jacob said to his Children Simeon and Levi upon the Sack of Sichem Gen. 24.30 Turbâstis me & odiosam fecistis me Chananaeis & Pherezaeis habitatoribus terrae hujus You have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the Land Besides in celebrating the first Advent of the Son of God himself she testifies that all the Kings of the Earth and even the most fierce of Tyrants had no reason to have been jealous of the coming of this new King for that he who gives to his the Kingdom of Heaven ravishes not from Princes the Kingdoms of the Earth Non eripit mortalia Qui Regna dat coelestia But our Popes take it for an honour done them when men attribute to them praises quite contrary to what the Church gives jesus Christ and Kings are in danger of their Empires since they can take from Princes both their States and Kingdoms But doubtless when they shall have considered how unfortunate these pretences have proved to them and how odious they still are they will easily themselves acknowledge the truth of these excellent words which the Advocate general Mons. du Mesnil has in those Memoirs of his upon the procedures of Rome against the Queen of Navarre inserted amongst the Liberties of the Gallican Church Whilst the Popes of Rome pursued the footsteps of Charity and Christian Humility confining their power to the Spiritual Government established by God in his Gospel without arrogating to themselves a magisterial temporal or worldly Dominion so long they received universal reverence and sincere obedience from all men But no sooner did they or any of them exalt themselves by assuming an Authority not only as Peers but Superiors to Kings but they became in danger of losing their own Authority and that too which they would have usurped from others and have created trouble both to the Kingdom of God and of his Church Certainly those Popes who shall but consider these Christian and pious Reasons will never suffer themselves to be surprised with the Flatteries of those about them and will understand that 't is not the Interest of the Holy See which these Sycophants look after but their particular profit Nor do they always dissemble their low and unworthy pretences nor are they afraid sometimes to soothe the Pope as one would do the Turk or great Mogul by those profusions of money which he spends on his Courtiers Let the Italians says that Italian Carrerius lift up their heads above all Nations of the Earth for that singular grace and favour which God has done them in bestowing on them a spiritual Prince namely the Bishop of Rome who has chased great Kings and mighty Emperors from their Thrones to set others in their places to whom so many potent Kingdoms paid tribute so long as never any thing has been seen like it and who divides such riches amongst those of his Court as never any King or Emperor hath done before But these so lofty Eulogies in the eyes of these base and interested spirits appear but Sacrilegious to those who truly honour the grandeur of the Spiritual Authority of the Pope It is the very same in the matter of Infallibility the politic Theologues thinking to procure a great advantage to the Pope by publishing this Doctrine never considering that on one side they put a very great obstacle to the reuniting of Heretics who are more scandalised with this pretention then with all those Points of our Faith in which we disagree and on the other that by this Doctrine they make the Pope in danger to deceive himself and expose the Church to Schisms and Divisions For 't is this pretence of Infallibility which may induce Popes to neglect to take the legitimate and ordinary ways of deciding Points of Faith who by the consent even of Cardinal Bellarmine himself aught to assemble Councils and there only regularly examine Controversies of Religion which they will hardly ever be brought to do so long as they are persuaded that they are Infallible without obligation to any other forms Nor let them allege how great an advantage it is the having an infallible Authority in the Church to which there is so easy an access as if the verity of things depended upon their commodiousness Were this so we must also conclude that Popes are impeccable too at least in the Government of the Church for who would question but that were likewise very commodious for hindering the Damnation of so many persons by these unlawful Dispensations which persuade them that  the Pope permits is as truly lawful as if God himself had said it whereas really there is nothing more true than what an Ancient has affirmed namely That the greatest part of Dispensations are nothing else but a more easy descent into Hell with the Pope's permission Facilis descensus ad inferos cum bona venia Papae But as this Impeccability would be exceedingly advantageous if indeed God had bestowed it upon Popes so on the contrary there can nothing be more pernicious than the Flattery of those who go about to attribute it to him since it the more emboldens them blindly to pursue their own Passions without fearing to offend God And this is what those Cardinals and Prelates chosen by Paul the IIIᵈ for the Reformation of the Church affirmed really to have succeeded by means of * Coacervaucrunt sibi non-nulli Pontifices Magistros ad desideria sua non ut ab eis disecrent quid facere deberent set ut corum study & calliditate inveniretur ratio qua liceret id quod liberet Ità quòd Voluntas Pontificis qualiscunque ca fucrit sit regula quam ejus operationes & actiones dirigantur Ex quo proculdubio efficitur ut quidquid libeat id etiam liceat Ex hoc fonte Sancte Pater tanquam ex equo Trojano irrupere in Ecclesiam Dei tot abusus & tam gravissimi morbi quibus nunc conspicimus cam ad desperationem fere salutis laborâsse some Persons who would needs persuade some Popes that their Wills were a sufficient Rule for their Actions whence it followed that what they pleased was lawful and hence say they have as from a source and spring flowed such an infinity of abuses and intestine maladies as have reduced the Church to such a condition as her recovery seems in a manner to be desperate We may affirm the same of Infallibility It would be an extraordinary Privilege but the Scripture having assured us that Every man is a Liar unless some Authority not inferior to it have exempted us from that Rule 't is a great unhappiness to believe one's self Infallible because there is nothing that we are more propense to then the falling into Error by presuming we cannot err And on the other side it may truly be said that the likeliest means of rendering Pope's infallible were to persuade them that they are not so to the end a holy fear may always preserve them in an humble and salutary diffidence of their own sense and incline them to a diligent research of those ways and expedients which God has established to assure them of his divine Truths Paris the 1. of February 1662. FINIS An ADVERTISEMENT upon the following DISCOURSE IT has been long said that in the precedent Discourse there have been laid the grounds of pernicious Consequences etc. that divers things have been taken out of the Notes upon the Pope's Infallibility formerly made by the same Author But since there has been nothing alleged against what was solidly discussed in these Notes touching the Authority of the Councils of Constance and Basil it is thought pertinent to add it here A REFUTATION OF Certain Cavils with which some Theologues endeavour to elude the Authority of the Councils of CONSTANCE and BASIL THE Sense of the Church upon the point of Infallibility did never more perspicuously appear then in the times of the Councils of Constance and Basil so venerably esteemed by all France 'T is well known that the Doctrine of the Superiority of a Council above the Pope does necessarily destroy his pretended Infallibility because all Authority which is inferior seeing it may be corrected 't is impossible it should be infallible since an Authority that is infallible cannot be corrected It follows then of necessity that if the Pope be inferior to a Council he is not infallible All Divines are agreed upon this consequence and there is none who maintain the Infallibility of the Pope but they likewise maintain that he is superior to a Council Moreover if Popes be inferior to Councils it follows clearly that they are not only fallible but it is also as evident that they have actually erred seeing Leo the Xth has defined the contrary in the Council of Lateran It is therefore certain that the Superiority of a Council above a Pope does by necessary consequence involve his Fallibility Now this Superiority was clearly decided in the 4th Session of the Council of Constance where the Council declares Concilium Generale habere à Christo immediatam Authoritatem cui omnes obedire tenentur etiam si Papalis dignitatis existat And thus the Fallibility of the Pope was defined by this Decree The novel defenders of the Superiority of Popes above Councils exceedingly torture themselves about this Decree of the Council of Constance For they cannot deny but that Pope Martin the Vth elected by this Council did confirm it in all things which had relation to Faith Now the Authority of General Councils is matter of Faith which forces them thus to precipitate themselves upon Solutions so ridiculously weak that it is strange any Divines should be found who durst propose them In the first place they affirm that the Council of Constance is approved by Martin the Vth in his quae Conciliariter gesta sunt but that this Decree was not made Conciliariter because say they it was made without Examen and therefore was not approved 'T is easy to see how dangerous an Answer this is since if men be once permitted to distinguish in Councils after this manner between Decrees examined and not examined the way is open to weaken all their Authority For how many matters are there which having been very well examined before Councils have been called have no need of being re-examined for a long time after whilst all Prelates and Divines remain agreed concerning them But there is no necessity of insisting upon this since this Solution is founded only upon manifest Falsities there being in the world nothing more untrue than the pretence of those Authors that the Decrees of the 4th and 5th Session about the Superiority of Councils were not of the number of those things which were decreed Conciliariter For 't is remarkable that the order of the Council of Constance was first to propose and examine matters in the particular Congregations of the principal Nations of Christendom and then they were said to have been decreed Nationaliter After that they were proposed again in the public Sessions and when they were concluded there than they were pronounced to have been determined Conciliariter Whereas that which had only been decreed by the Nations and not in the public and general Session of the Council was never said to be determined Conciliariter but Nationaliter only This is the true explication of these two words as appears by the place itself which these Authors would pervert For they have not any thing to allege on this subject save what we read in the conclusion of the Council which was in the 45th Session A Cardinal having said according to the custom Domini ite in pace and a Dominican gotten up into the Pulpit to preach the Ambassadors of the King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania asked the Pope in the name of their Masters That before the Council were dissolved he should cause to be condemned in a public Session or else declare for condemned the Book of a certain Friar one John Falkenberg which notoriously maintained divers horrible Errors and Heresies and which had already been lawfully condemned for heretical by the Deputies as to what concerned the Faith and which had likewise been concluded by all the Nations of the Council and by the College of Cardinals That unless this were consented to they did protest denial of justice in the name of their Masters and would appeal to the next Council Which being done the Acts added Our holy Father the Pope replying said That he would inviolably hold and observe all and every the things which had been determined concluded and decreed in matters of Faith by the present Council Conciliarly and that he would never in any kind contradict it That so he approved and did ratify all that had thus Conciliarly been done and no otherwise whatsoever Dixit respondendo ad praedicta Quòd omnia & singula determinata conclusa & decreta in materiis Fidei per praesens Concilium Conciliariter tenere & inviolabiliter observare volebat & nunquam contraire quoquo modo Ipsáque sic Conciliariter facta approbat & ratificat & non aliter nec alio modo See here the only foundation of Cajetan's distinction and the sole reason which he alleges to pretend that Pope Martin the Vth did not approve the Decrees touching the Superiority of Councils as not done Conciliariter But by the very same he evidently approves that he has approved them since the Pope includes in his Approbation whatsoever had been determined Conciliariter and excludes but what having been concluded by the Nations had only been determined Nationaliter and not Conciliariter forasmuch as it was not proposed in the public and general Sessions of the Council so as had been the condemnation of Falkenberg's Book which he refused to ratify for reasons not known to us Now it is evident and no ways doubtful but the Decrees touching a Council's Superiority were first examined and concluded by the Nations and afterwards established and determined in two public and general Sessions of the Council that is to say in the 4th and 5th where 't is noted that these Decrees were first of all deliberated and concluded by all the Nations Certa Capitula per modum Constitutionum prius per singulas quatuor Nationes conclusa & deliberata legit & publicavit And 't is said at the end of the Session that the Council had uniformly approved and concluded them Quibus Articulis sive Constitutionibus lectis dictum Concilium eos & eas uniformiter approbavit & conclusit Were it not then altogether shameful and most impudent to presume to deny that Martin the Vth had approved these Decrees since he has so expressly approved whatsoever was determined in the Council Conciliariter and that 't is as clear as day the Decrees were determined Nationaliter & Conciliariter In like manner we see that the two latter Annalists of the Church Spondanus and Raynaldus to give some colour to this Cheat change either in the whole or in part the subject and occasion which caused Martin the Vth to say that he only approved that which had been done Conciliariter For Raynaldus Anno 1418. n. 2. falsely supposes that Martin the Vth speaks these words upon the Fathers of the Council demanding a confirmation of the Acts cum veteri more says he à Patribus Martinus rogatus esset ut Concilii Acta Apostolicâ authoritate confirmaret ità ipsum respondisse tradunt Acta S. D. N. Papa dixit respondendo ad praedicta nimirum postulata quòd omnia & singula determinata etc. Which is a notorious Forgery since one need only read the Acts to see that the Fathers of the Council did not ask for a Confirmation of the Acts and that it was not to answer this demand that he says what is reported by Raynaldus but that he might not consent to what was required by the King of Poland's Ambassadors concerning the condemnation of Falkenberg's Book so as it is not to be denied but this Historian has committed a shameful Falsification in feigning the Pope to answer what was never demanded of him and in adding those two words nimirum postulata in Italic Characters to the word praedicta to make that agree to the demands of the Fathers of the Council which has relation only to the words of the Polonian Ambassadors Spondanus durst not be altogether so bold with the Truth nor deny these words of Martin the Vth to have been spoken upon occasion of the Polonian's demand But he suppresses the protestation of Appealing to the future Council because that had too evidently showed how false that which he imagines is That it was on design and in collusion with Martin the V●h that these Ambassadors deferred their demand till this last Session that so they might have an opportunity to observe what Decrees of the Council he did approve by his Apostolical Authority and what he did not approve lest if they had moved it before they might have excited some murmur and trouble among the Fathers by reason of that which had been decided after an ambiguous manner touching the Authority of a Council above a Pope and their power of reforming the Church both as to its Head and Members which Pope Martin would not receive nor approve by taking these Decisions absolutely and in the precise significations of terms All which is but a pure imagination without any manner of ground For besides that the Polonians who appealed from the Pope to the Council could not be suspected to have conspired with him since there is nothing which Popes more abhor then these Appeals to Councils the answer of Pope Martin the Vth puts no distinction between the Decrees which are found amongst the Acts of the Council as if he had approved the one without the other but shows on the contrary that he approved all these Decrees and that he did not deny his Approbation but as to what did not appear in these Acts as concluded in the Council for having been determined only by the Nations such as was the condemnation of this Book of Falkenberg It cannot therefore be maintained with the least pretence of likelihood that Martin the Vth did not approve the Decrees of the Council of Constance touching the Superiority of General Councils And that which makes it yet more evident is that Pope Eugenius the IVth though he continually strove to prefer himself above Councils durst not yet openly oppose those Decrees of Constance nor reject them as not approved by Martin the Vth his Predecessor but pretends only that the Council of Basil had abused them by applying them to an ill sense Quòd Concilium Constantiense in malignum sensum pertraxerint because it had taken occasion upon this Definition to depose him and to create another Pope But towards the latter end of his life the Emperor Frederick and the Princes of Germany who kept themselves in a Neutrality between the Council of Basil and this Pope being willing to come to an agreement with him one of the Conditions of the Accord was That Eugenius should by a Bull make the same profession which had already been made in Germany by his Legates concerning the Power Authority and Preeminence of General Councils representing the Catholic Church militant These are the very terms of the Harangue which was made by Aeneas Silvius in the name of these Princes Alterum est ut professio Potestatis Authoritatis & Praeeminentiae Generalium Conciliorum Catholicam Militantem Ecclesiam repraesentantium per tuos Oratores facta tuis Literis approbetur To which the Pope consented by his Bull as 't is recited by Raynaldus Tom. 18. ad ann 1447. n. 15. where he declares That he embraces and reuerences the General Council of Constance its Decree FREQUENS by which this Council took upon it an action of Superiority over Popes in ordaining them to convoke and assemble Councils every ten years and disabling their power of retarding this term but only to advance it and all its other Decrees as likewise all other Councils representing the Catholic Church militant That he did acknowledge their Power their Authority their Honour and their Eminence as his other Predecessors had done from whose footsteps he would not deviate Concilium autem Generale Constantiense Decretum FREQUENS & alia ejus Decreta sicut caetera alia Concilia Catholicam Militantem Ecclesiam repraesentantia ipsorum Potestatem Authoritatem Honorem Eminentiam sicut & caeteri Praedecessores nostri à quorum vestigiis deviare nequaquam intendimus suscipimus amplectimur & veneramur But the reflection which Raynaldus makes upon these words of Eugenius shows us what the faith and candour of those persons is 'T is a thing says he that deserves observation that Eugenius by those Letters gives no more Authority to the Decree of the Council of Constance beginning with the word Frequens but what Martin the Vth had done before Now this very Author pretends An. 1433. that Martin the Vth had not approved the Chapter FREQUENS of the Council of Constance but that on the contrary he had abridged it by the Dissolution of the Council of Sienna so as according to this Author the sense of the words of Eugenius were That he receives embraces and reuerences the Decree FREQUENS as far as his Predecessors and that his Predecessor having neither received embraced nor reverenced it neither did he receive embrace or reverence it Could one offer a greater injury to Pope Eugenius then to take the words of his Bull in a sense so estranged from Christian sincerity and think that he would juggle with the whole Germane Church by so gross a Delusion But that which does yet farther ruin all these Sophisms is that Pope Pius the IIᵈ in the same Bull where he retracts that which he had written for the Council of Basil against Pope Eugenius formally approves the Council of Constance and in particular that Decree touching the Authority of General Councils Come his says he & Generalis Concilii Autoritatem & Potestatem complectimur quemadmodum & aevo nostro Constantiae dum ibi fuit Synodus Universalis declaratum definitúmque est Veneramur enim N. Constantiense Concilium & cuncta quae praecesserunt à Romanis Pontificibus nostris praedecessoribus approbata So that if it be pretended that Pius the IIᵈ would maintain that the Pope were superior to a Council one must also necessarily pretend that he manifestly contradicted himself But it is enough to refute this false Distinction that he not only authorises the Council of Constance in general but particularly in that which it has defined concerning the Authority of Councils The Second Reply whereof these modern Authors make use is That the Council of Constance does not define the Authority of all General Councils but that only which it has during a Schism when there is no lawful Pope in the Church But this Solution as novel as the former is manifestly ruined by the same words of the Council of Constance which expressly particularise that it defines the Authority of all General Councils and not only its own in particular Item declarat says the Council in the Article immediately following after what I have cited quò quicunque cujuscunque statûs & dignitatis etiam Papalis existat qui Mandatis Statutis seu Ordinationibus aut Praeceptis hujus Sacrae Synodi & cujuscunque alterius Concilii legitimè congregati super praemissis seu ad ea pertinentibus factis vel faciendis obedire contumaciter contempserit nisi resipuerit condignae poenitentiae subjiciatur & debitè puniatur There can be nothing then imagined more frivolous than such an imagination that the Council of Constance spoke only of its own Authority and not of that of other Councils since it clearly decides that the Popes who despised the Determinations of any General Councils whatsoever are worthy to be punished Moreover Pope Pius the IIᵈ in the fore-alledged passage formally acknowledged that this Council has determined the Authority of Councils in general and not its own in particular Generalis Concilii Authoritatem & Potestatem complectimur quemadmodum & aevo nostro Constantiae dum ibi fuit Synodus Universalis declaratum definitúmque est In like manner the whole Church in receiving the Council of Constance has uniformly understood that it has defined the Superiority of a Council above the Pope Therefore France and the Faculty of the Parisian Divines which have particularly adhered to this Council have likewise always embraced this Doctrine nor have ever admitted any other as Major affirms in c. 18. Matt. Superiùs says he ostensum est quòd Augustinus & alii Doctores tenent partem quam insequimur nempe Concilium esse supra Papam hanc tenuerunt varii Cardinals & joannes Patriarcha Antiochenus Petrus de Aliaco Cardinalis Cameracensis Nicolaus de Cusa Doctor vocatus Christianissimus joannes Gerson Cancellarius Parisiensis nunquam satìs laudatus nostra Facultas Parisiensis à diebus Concilii Constantiensis in qua plures habebis exercitatos Theologos quam in duobus vel tribus Regnis quae sic hanc partem fovent quòd nulli licuit asserere oppositum probabile See here what has been the judgement of the Faculty of Paris till Mons. Duval appeared on the stage The Council of Basil held 12 years after renewed these Decrees of the Council of Constance of the second Session Anno 1432. And because Eugenius the IVth would remove it to Bologna the Council having maintained that it was not in the power of the Pope because a Council was above him Eugenius was fain Anno 1434. to revoke all that which had been done against the Council and to declare by a Bull that it had been lawfully continued from the beginning till then whereupon he sent new Legates thither besides Cardinal julian who had continued all the while there which in the 17th Session swore to maintain the Decrees of the Superiority of a Council which were yet farther renewed in the 18th Session All this shows that Bellarmine had no reason to affirm that the Superiority of a Council above the Pope was not defined till the 33th Session when Eugenius had broke the Council by adjourning it to Ferrara it being evident that the Decrees of Constance were there several times renewed during the time that the Council was acknowledged for Oecumenick by Eugenius himself and by consequence certain it is that the Decisions of the former Sessions are the Decisions of an Ecumenical Council representing the Church universal and approved by a Pope FINIS