388 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
themselves in your general assertion, p. 55, "That they who after papal decisions remain contumacious forfeit their Christianity?" and if so, whether you do not at once overthrow all your other splendid concessions, and make kings absolute dependants on the pope for all the privileges of their Christianity; and whether you account not among them their very regal dignity itself? — whereby it may easily appear how much Protestant kings and potentates are beholding unto you, seeing it is manifest that they live and rule in a neglect of many papal decisions and determinations. 7. Whether you do not very fondly pretend to prove your Roman Catholics' acknowledgment of the power of princes to make laws, in cases ecclesiastical, from the laws of Justinian, p. 59 ; whereas they are instances of regal power, in such cases plainly destructive of your present Hildebrandine faith and authority ? and whether you suppose such laws to have any force or authority of law without the papal sanction and confirmation? 8. Whether you think, indeed, that confession unto priests is such an effectual means of securing the peace and interest of kings as you pre- tend, p. 59? and whether Queen Elizabeth, King James, Henry III. and IV. of France, had cause to believe it? and whether you learned this notion from Parry, Eavaillac, Mariana, Clement, Parsons, Allen, Garnet, Gerard, Oldcome, with their associates? 9. Whether you forget not yourself when you place " Aaron and Joshua in govern- ment together," p. 64? 10. Whether you really believe that the pope hath power only to ^' pey^suade in matters of religion," as you pretend, p. 651 and if so, from what topics he takes the luhips, wires, and racks that he makes use of in his Inquisition? and whether he hath not a right even to destroy kings themselves, who will not be his executioners in destroying of others? I wish you would come out of the clouds, and speak your mind freely and plainly to some of these inquiries. Your present ambiguous discourse, in the face of it, suited unto your interest, gives no satisfaction whilst these snakes lie in the grass of it. Wherefore, leaving you a little to your second thoiights, I shall inquire of your masters and fathers themselves what is the true sense of your church in this matter ; and we shall find them speaking it out plainly and roundly. For they tell us, —
1. That the government of the whole catholic church is mon- archical,— a state wherein all power is derived from one fountain, one and the same person. This is the first principle that is laid down by all your writers, in treating of the church and its power, and that which your great Cardinal Baronius lays as the foundation on which he builds the huge structure of his ecclesiastical annals.
2, That the ptoj^e is this monarch of the church, — the person in whom alone the sovereign rule of it is originally vested; so that it is absolutely impossible that any other person should have, enjoy, or
rOWER OF KINGS IN MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL. 389
use any ecclesiastical authority but what is derived from him. I be- lieve you supjDose this sufficiently proved by Bellarmine and others. Yourself own it, nor can deny it without a disclaimure of your pre- sent Papacy. And this one principle perfectly discovers the vanity of your pretended attributions (.if power in ecclesiastical things to kings and princes; for to suppose a monarchical estate, and not to suppose all power and authority in that state to be derived from the monarch in it and of it alone, is to suppose a perfect contradiction, or a state monarchical that is not monarchical. Protestants place the monarchical state of the catholic church in its relation unto Christ alone; and therefore it is incumbent on them to assert that no man hath, nor can have, a power in the church, as such, but what is derived from and communicated unto him by him. And you, placing it in reference unto the pope, must of necessity deny that any power can be exercised in it but what is derived from him ; so that whatever you pretend in this kind to grant unto kings, you allow it unto them only by concession or delegation from the pope. They must hold it from him in chief, or he cannot be the chief, only, and absolute head and monarch, of the catholic church ; which you would persuade us to be- lieve that he is. Kings then may, even in church affairs, be "strikers" under him, — be the servants and executioners of his will and pleasure ; but authority from God, immediately in and about them, they have none, nor can have any whilst your imaginary monarchy takes place. This one fundamental principle of your religion sufficiently discovers the insignificancy of your flourish about kingly authority in ecclesias- tical things, seeing, upon a supposition of it, they can have none at all. But you stay not here; for, —
3. You ascribe unto your popes a universal dominion, even in civil things, over all Christian kings and their subjects. In the explanation of this dominion, I confess you somewhat vary among yourselves; but the thing itself is generally asserted by you, and made a foundation of practice. Some of you maintain that the pope, by divme right and constitution, hath an absolute supreme dominion over the whole world. This opinion, Bellarmine, lib. v., De Pont. cap. 1, confesseth to be maintained by Augustinus Triumphus, Al- varus, Pelagius, Hostiensis, and Panormitanus. And himself, in the next words, condemns the opinion of them who deny the pope to have any such temporal po^ver as that he may command secular princes, and deprive them of their kingdoms aud principalities, not only as false, but as downright heresy. And why doth he name the first opinion as that of four or five doctors, when it is the comiiion opinion of your church, as Baronius sufficiently manifests in the life of Gregory VII. ? That great preserver of your pontifical omnipo- tency, in his bull against Henry the German emperor, affirms that he