all things to your Remembrance, whatsoever I have told you. 1 go away, and come again to you; and I have told you before it come to pass: you have been with me from the beginning. And these things have I told you, that when the time shall come you may remember that I told you of them. And thefe things I faid not to you at the Beginning, because I was with you, and because I have faid these things unto you, Sorrow hath filled your Hearts. yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. Howbeit when the Spirit of Truth is come, he fhall guide you unto all Truth.

I have

All thefe Expreffions, and many more in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth Chapters of St. John, appropriate the Difcourfe of our Lord to the Apostles. His whole address to them in thofe Chapters fhews, that the Promife of his Spirit was made in a most particular manner to them; and accordingly it came upon them when they were affembled on the Day of Pentecoft in a moft miraculous manner, and ever afterwards afflifted them outwardly with Signs and Wonders, and divers Miracles, and inwardly with divers Xagiouala, or, Gifts of the Holy Ghost. It was neceffary for me to obferve this, because your design was to make the Lady believe that the Holy Ghoft fat in the Council with the Fathers of Trent, in the fame manner, as he did with the Apoftles in the Affembly at Hierufalem; which had not been true, though all, or the majority of them, had been pure Lovers of Truth, and Men of dif-interessed and unprejudicat Minds, as fome few were. But though the Holy Ghoft doth not dwell in that peculiar infallible manner with the Succeffors of the Apostles, as he did with them by outward Miracles and in inward Infpirations; nor Teach and Guide thofe, as he did thefe; yet he ftill teaches and guides them fufficiently, and in fuch a meafure as is neceffary for Men who have the Writings of the Apoftles, and their Apoftolical Suc

5

ceffors

ceffors for their Rule in all Controverfies: And no doubt but upon their diligent, devout, and impartial fearch of Truth in them, will guide them into all Truth. But the Apostles, who had no Rule of Faith themselves, but were to be the Authors and Preconizers of the new Faith to the World, had need of the immediate and infallible Guidance and Inspiration of the Holy Ghoft, who taught them in our Saviour's ftead. And the Church having in their Writings the Faith which they once delivered by that infallible Guidance, needs no fuch Guidance now; nor can the Representatives of it, however affembled, with Truth, or any tolerable Modefty, use the Name of the Holy Ghost now as they did then. The Succeffors of the Apoftles have had the Writings of the New Teftament, as the Jews had of the Old; and like the Jews, if they will not hear them in their Writings, but refift the Evidence of Truth in them, we may be fure they will refift the Guidance, and Motions of the Holy Ghost. This, Sir, was the very cafe of the TrentFathers, the greater part of whom, without any regard to the Scriptures, or the Spirit of Truth fpeaking in them, condemned true Doctrines as falfe, and declared falfe Doctrines, which the Apostles never taught, to be of that Faith which they once delivered to the Saints. I muft alfo, before I leave this Paragraph, beg leave to defcant a little upon your Question: Must not the Succeffors of the Apoftles convene from all Parts of the Catholick World? The Catholick World is a reftraining Expreffion, as well as the Catholick Church in you and all your Writers, even in the Council of Trent it felf. And I doubt not but by the Catholick World you only mean that part of Chriftendom only which is within the Roman Pale; which, Sir, I must tell you again, in that Senfe is a falfe and most infolent Expreffion, utterly excluding all other Churches from being Members of the

Catholick

Catholick Church, and from the Claim and Title of Catholicism, and all the Succeffors of the Apoftles from General Councils, but thofe of your narrow Church.

For unless the Apoftolical Authority of declaring what is Faith be continued in their (the Apostles) Succeffors, the Holy Catholick Church is left helpless against emerging Errors. Sir, as the Church was committed jointly and feverally, in whole and in part, to the truft of the Apostles; fo it is committed to their Succeffors, who not only have Authority to declare against Errors and Herefies, but are in Duty bound to declare against them. But then forafmuch as they have not the immediate, infallible Guidance of the Holy Ghoft as the Apostles had, but only a plain Rule of knowing Truth from Errors, and what are Doctrines of Faith and what are Doctrines contrary to it; they must apply to that Rule, and attend to it: And that Rule, as one of your best Writers hath told you, and as we must ever tell you, is the Scriptures, as understood by confentient Antiquity; and to this Rule the greater Number of the Representatives of the Church affembled at Trent, whatever they pretended, had little or no regard: And to this Rule we appeal against you and your new Articles of Faith, and are willing that any Free and General Council, and in the mean time that Chrift Jefus himself should be Judge between us.

Now thefe declarations are indeed New, as the Errors are New against which they are made; but the import of them, or Doctrine propofed to the Church by them are as ancient as the Faith once delivered to the Saints.

Sir, you rightly diftinguish here between Declarations made in the Council of Trent, and the Doctrines contained and propofed in them; and these are the Matter of my Challenge, which you pretend to Answer without Proof, that they are

as

a

as ancient as the Faith once delivered to the Saints And not to tranfcribe your following Period, but ufe the Expreffions in it; you may register those new and falfe Doctrines as often as you will into a Creed, and call it, as you do, Pope Pius's Creed, the Catholick Creed, and declare them to be Articles of Faith, attested by Catholick Authority; and yet unless you can prove them to be truly Catholick in the Senfe of Vincentius, that is, to be Doarines which were believed always, every where, and by all Churches, your bare faying, and afferting fignifies nothing: For I challenged my Adverfary, whofe Second you have made your felf, to fhew, that the Trent-Doctrines were Catholick in this Catholick Senfe. The next Period is but a Tautology of the Precedent, and therefore I pafs over it to the following Words; And now to fpeak to the Challenge, p. 190. Indeed, Sir, it is time you fpoke to it, for hitherto you have not faid one word à propos to it, but advanced, as my former Adverfary did, many bold Affertions without one word of Proof; in which you all along prefume, and suppose your Church to be the Holy Catholick Universal Church, and your Trent-Fathers to have been the Representatives of the Holy Catholick Univerfal Church in a Free and General Synod, and to have been affifted by the Holy Ghost: Which you know one of your own Writers in de rifion of them tells us, they received in a Portmanteau time after time from Rome.

Now, fay you, to speak to the Challenge, where was your Church, and Trent-Do&rine before Luther? I answer, it was where it is, viz. in the Mouth and Practice of the Vifible, Apoftolick, Ca

a Cap. 3. In ipfa item Catholica Ecclefia magnopere Curandum eft, ut id teneamus, quod ubique, quod femper, quod ab omnibus creditum eft. Hoc eft enim vere, proprieque Catholicum.

tholick Church in all Ages, as the Writers in every Age testify; fome mentioning this Trent-Doctrine, and fome another. Here I muft observe, that you ftill go on faying without proving. For out of all Ages of the Catholick Church, I excepted the first Six; and neither here, nor in what follows, have you produced Antiquity and Univerfality, for any of your Trent-Doctrines, de fide, in the Writers of any of thofe Ages, or fhew'd their Conveyance and Succeffion through them all, as I challenged my Adverfary to do. Secondly, I muft beg leave to ask you, why you would fay they were in the Mouth of the Church of all Ages, unless you designed the Lady should think by that Expreffion, that you had an oral Cabala or Tradition for your Trent-Doctrines, as the Masons fay they have of their Word tranfmitted through all Countries and Ages, from their building of the Tower of Babel: And why you now add Vifible to Catholick Apoftolical Church; for our Church, as well as yours, hath been Vifible fince her first Foundation, and both are still visible Parts of the Univerfal Church; only with this difference, that yours is a greater and ours a leffer Part, and ours pure but yours a corrupt Member thereof. Befides, Sir, the Controverfy is not about the vifibility of the Church, but the Doctrines of Faith. -Neither can you prove, that the visible Church must ceafe when it ceafes to be visible; or that it would fail from its being, if it failed to be feen. But however it is artfully done of you, by adding this word to make the Lady believe, that we maintain the defectibility of the visible Church, or that he fails totally from her Effence, when fhe fails only from her Purity, as your visible Church for many Ages hath done.

The World is filled with the Quotations of fuch Writers. To which I answer, as I did to the Lady, that the World is filled with Books which

2'

fhew